Posted on 10/28/2009 2:34:39 PM PDT by decimon
PHILADELPHIA - An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.
The results appear in the current issue of the journal Geology.
The rate of relative sea-level rise, or RSLR, during the 20th century was 3 to 3.3 millimeters per year, higher than the usual rate of one per year. Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
Understanding the timing and magnitude of this possible acceleration in the rate of RSLR is critical for testing models of global climate change and for providing a context for 21st-century predictions.
"Tide gauge records are largely inadequate for accurately recognizing the onset of any acceleration of relative sea-level rise occurring before the 18th century, mainly because too few records exist as a comparison," Andrew Kemp, the paper's lead author, said. "Accurate estimates of sea-level rise in the pre-satellite era are needed to provide an appropriate context for 21st-century projections and to validate geophysical and climate models."
The research team studied two North Carolina salt marshes that form continuous accumulations of organic sediment, a natural archive that provides scientists with an accurate way to reconstruct relative sea levels using radiometric isotopes and stratigraphic age markers. The research provided a record of relative sea-level change since the year 1500 at the Sand Point and Tump Point salt marshes in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system of North Carolina. The two marshes provided an ideal setting for producing high-resolution records because thick sequences of high marsh sediment are present and the estuarine system is microtidal, which reduces the vertical uncertainty of aleosea-level estimates. The study provides for the first time replicated sea-level reconstructions from two nearby sites.
In addition, comparison with 20th-century tide-gauge records validates the use of this approach and suggests that salt-marsh records with decadal and decimeter resolution can supplement tide-gauge records by extending record length and compensating for the strong spatial bias in the global distribution of longer instrumental records.
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The study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Ocean Program, North Carolina Coastal Geology Cooperative Program, U.S. Geological Survey and National Science Foundation.
The study was conducted by Kemp and Benjamin P. Horton of the Sea-Level Research Laboratory at Penn, Stephen J. Culver and D. Reide Corbett of the Department of Geological Sciences at East Carolina University, Orson van de Plassche of Vrije Universiteit, W. Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth, Bruce C. Douglas of Florida International University and Andrew C. Parnell of University College Dublin.
Let's kill the cap and tax plan permanently. Global warming theory (warming caused by CO2) is a complete hoax pushed by supporters of global income redistribution and world government. The IPCC's climate forecasting model is riddled with errors.
OMG 3 mm per year somewhere in a thousand years or so I will care
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
That's a possibility unless there's evidence to the contrary.
We must dam the Panama canal before it’s too late.
3.3 millimeters. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THIS CRAP?!?!?!
That’s what they get for becoming a blue state last year. ;-)
Because global warming affects NC only.
Well, that's why you have mountains. Florida, on the other hand...
Mabey North Carolina is sinking instead!
...not to mention that atmospheric CO2 levels in the last 30 years have been much higher than back before 1915 when this rise in sea levels occurred. Thus there is no statistical correlation proved here between CO2 and sea levels.
Sounds about right.
Just North Carolina? Plenty of places where it isn’t rising any faster than it ever has, so perhaps the Atlantic coast area is maybe SINKING a little too, I wonder how they figure that into their formula.
Somebody in NC left for vacation with the water running.
An 1/8” per year is what they are claiming, I call BS on this, an inch every 8 years? Ten inches in a single long lifespan? No way.
Must be all the yankees moving to North Carolina from New York and New Jersey.
I think it was on Drudge today that insturments set up to measure ocean levels have shown no change in last 20-30 years.
That's CONTINENTAL MASS that's "rebounding" or "rising".
North Carolina, et al, rest on a relatively thinner piece of the continent and should sink as the mass only a few hundred miles to the West rises.
It's like gigantic teetertotter!
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