According to an article entitled ‘Arctic dips as global waters rise’ published at BBC News, sea levels in the Arctic have been falling by a little over 2mm a year. It goes on to explain that while it is well known that the world’s oceans do not share a uniform height, the scientists are nevertheless puzzled by their findings. And so am I.
Read the full article here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
What to believe ?
Some studies indicate that for example Arctic coastal communities are threatened by sea level rise.
Other studies indicate that land uplift exceeds the rate of sea-level rise in Norway, Sweden,Finland, Canada.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-08-02.asp
http://geography.swan.ac.uk/glaciology/slices/
Hi Ann,
Sea leel is a surprisingly complicated and non-uniform thing. It varies by as much as two metres from point to point on the global oceans. My understanding of *most* of the problems with arctic communities is that thawing permafrost along the coast is the cause of the extreme erosion they are experiencing, not sea level.
I wrote a brief article on sea level in the arctic, which has a number of links in it you fight find interesting to follow up on.
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/06/sea-level-in-arctic-is-falling.html
Oh, I had forget to mention that the majority, by far, of arctic coastal communities are not on the arctic ocean. Think of Alaska for example, most of the coastal communities there are on the Pacific Ocean.
I liked the refreshing modesty, at least for researchers in the area of climate, of Dr Scharoo, the lead researcher: “When you get a result like this you always worry that your processing of the data may have introduced signals that are not real. But we can’t find anything that we’ve done wrong, so that makes us think we have stumbled across something real – and we hope that will excite our colleagues,” he added” Mann et al take note! This guy actually wants some discussion.
Thanks Coby,
Yes, it seems like Alaska is especially affected by erosion.
Hi Coby,
This is off topic but I checked out your site. Nice one! Since I’m a Nordic and familiar with the old Greenland sagas , I wanted to make a comment on the Medevial Warming Period and a statement on the sagas.
Sorry,
Read : Medieval!
Rising or falling sea levels in the Arctic raises an interesting question – what is the reference benchmark for sea level measurements?
If the sea level dropped, was that because the benchmark on land rose relative to the sea level, or did the physical sea floor under the arctic, descend? And how would you, from measurement, know which was which and what was what.
And it occurs to me that sea level is an intensive variable so the problems of applying mathematical manipulations to such data occur.