Another Aussie Junk Science Sea Level Rise Paper Exposed
COMMENT TO FASULLO, J.T., C. BOENING, F. LANDERER, AND R.S. NEREM, AUSTRALIA’S UNIQUE INFLUENCE ON GLOBAL SEA LEVEL IN 2010-2011, GEO. RES. LETT., 2013, IN PRESS
Albert Parker
The lack of global warming over this century in the measurements of ground and deep oceans temperatures and the lack of positive acceleration in the measurements of sea levels suggest that the climate models have greatly exaggerated the influence of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission. However, rather than feeling uncomfortable with possibly wrong theories, many authors have recently re-focused their attention from “warming” to “weather extremes”, blaming climate “variability” and “uncertainty” for the lack of warming, or sorting out the most unrealistic explanations for the lack of warming of temperatures and accelerations of seas as it is the case of the claimed storage of 4.572·1012 m3 of water in Australia discussed in the commented paper.
The latest news about global warming report of temporary falls of the rate of rise of sea levels because of formation of Lake Eyre in Australia. 
“Global sea level has been rising as a result of global warming, but in 2010 and 2011, sea level actually fell by about a quarter of an inch. Scientists now say they know why: It has to do with extreme weather in Australia. The sea level drop coincided with some of the worst flooding in that continent’s history. Dozens of people died and torrents washed away houses and cars, forcing thousands from their homes. Some of those floodwaters simply ran back into the ocean, so they didn’t affect sea level. But a lot of that water was trapped on the Australian land mass. That’s because the continent has an odd geography.” writes Richard Harris [1] reporting on a work recently published by John Fasullo and others in the paper here commented [2].
The claim by Fasullo surprisingly accepted in the peer review is that “Australia’s hydrologic surface mass anomaly is responsible for the fall in the reconstruction of global mean sea level.” Apart from the fact that the global mean sea level (GMSL) reconstructions are not measurements but very questionable computations, it appear unbelievable that the natural formation of Lake Eyre in the centre of Australia can be considered responsible for a drop of a quarter of an inch in the GMSL.
Lake Eyre (Kati Thanda) is the lowest point in Australia, at approximately 15 m below sea level (lowest point when empty) and when it fills is the largest lake in Australia and the 18th largest in the world. The temporary shallow lake is found in South Australia some 700 km north of Adelaide. The surface area is 9,500 km2 maximum, with average depth 1.5 m every 3 years and 4 m every decade.
A good reviewer of the paper by Fasullo should have asked him why the 2010-2011 pattern is not evidenced a decade before in the GMSL computation that started early 1990s. Similar rain falls were indeed experienced about a decade ago [3], but the oceans did not fall that much.
Same good reviewer should also have asked Mr. Fasullo if he considers conservation of mass must be enforced when asserting that “the sea level dropped by a quarter of an inch during these raining times for Australia though normally it rises by an eighth of an inch per year and since that time the global sea level has risen by nearly an inch”. Approximately 72{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the planet’s surface totalling about 3.6×108 km2 is covered by saline water. In terms of the hydrosphere of the Earth oceans contain 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Earth’s water. Half inch of oceans translates in 4.572·1012 m3 of water. The average deep of Lake Eyre should have been 486 metres to store all that water that it does not seem to be the case.
Same good reviewer should have asked Mr. Fasullo why all the long term tide gauges continue to show same oscillations about a linear trend without any sign of accelerations since the beginning of the 1900 and during the two decades of the satellite reconstruction of the GMSL [4-10].
Same good reviewer should have asked Mr. Fasullo why there should be a rise in the level of the oceans if the thermometers have measured a flat ocean temperature up to 2000 m the first decade that measurements have been collected [10] and the ground temperatures have also been stable.
Same days Scott Simon [11] reports on the opportunity to cool down the warming climate with engineering projects. “Draft report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change was leaked to the media this week. The scientists will report to the U.N. that it is nearly certain that human activity has caused most of the earth’s climate change over the last 50 years. Now, this leak is certain to rekindle debates about how best to contend with events like increasing temperatures and rising sea levels, and it might make some people take a new look at what’s called geo engineering.” writes Scott Simon. The best energy policy options according to many climate advocates is to impose huge taxes on everything is carbon related to subsidise projects such as building machines that would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight away from the earth, changing the hydrology of a continent and similar. With reference to this latter option, it has already been proposed to flood Lake Eyre with seawater brought to the basin via canal or pipeline to increase rainfall in the region downwind of the lake [12]. If the computations of Mr. Fasullo are correct, this would certainly reduce at least temporarily the rate of rise of sea level [2], but we do have some doubts about the “sustainability” of digging channels of almost 700 km from the sea to Lake Eyre then to be kept clean of salt deposits all with tax payers’ monies.
References
1. Richard Harris, How Extreme Australian Rains Made Global Sea Levels Drop, www.npr.org, August 20, 2013.www.npr.org/2013/08/20/213577129/how-extreme-australian-rains-made-global-sea-levels-drop
2. Fasullo, J.T., C. Boening, F. Landerer, and R.S. Nerem, 2013: Australia’s Unique Influence on Global Sea Level in 2010-2011, Geo. Res. Lett., in press. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50834/abstract
3. Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, Australian climate variability & change – Time series graphs, 2013.www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=time-series&tQ{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5Bgraph{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5D=rain&tQ{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5Barea{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5D=aus&tQ{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5Bseason{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5D=0112&tQ{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5Bave_yr{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}5D=0
4. A. Parker, “Oscillations of sea level rise along the Atlantic coast of North America north of Cape Hatteras”, Natural Hazards, Volume 65, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 991-997. DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0354-7.
5. A. Parker, “SEA LEVEL TRENDS AT LOCATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES WITH MORE THAN 100 YEARS OF RECORDING”, Natural Hazards, Volume 65, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 1011-1021. DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0400-5.
6. A. Parker, M. Saad Saleem and M. Lawson, “Sea-Level Trend Analysis for Coastal Management”, Ocean and Coastal Management. Ocean & Coastal Management, Volume 73, March 2013, Pages 63–81. 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2012.12.005.
7. N-A Morner and A. Parker, “Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case”, Environmental Sciences: An Indian Journal, Vol. 8, Issues 2, 2013. tsijournals.com/esaij/Vol8Iss2/ABS01.htm
8. A. Parker, “NATURAL OSCILLATIONS AND TRENDS IN LONG-TERM TIDE GAUGE RECORDS FROM THE PACIFIC”, Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 1–13, 2013. www.pattern-recogn-phys.net/1/1/2013/. doi:10.5194/prp-1-1-2013.
9. A. Parker, “The non-linear, naturally oscillating pattern of sea-levels in the Chesapeake Bay, East Coast, USA”, Nonlinear Engineering. Volume 2, Issue 1-2, Pages 1–10, ISSN (Online) 2192-8010, ISSN (Print) 2192-8029, DOI: 10.1515/nleng-2013-0008, May 2013. www.degruyter.com/view/j/nleng.2013.2.issue-1-2/nleng-2013-0008/nleng-2013-0008.xml?format=INT
10. A. Parker, “COMPARISON OF LATEST US AND GLOBAL TIDE GAUGE RESULTS WITH THE IPCC AR4 SEA LEVEL PROJECTIONS: The acceleration free US and world average tide gauges”, Environmental Science : An Indian Journal, Vol. 8 Issue 7, 2013. www.tsijournals.com/tsijournals/Journals/Environmental{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20Science-An{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20Indian{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20Journal/vol_8_issue-7/Comparison{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20of{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20latest{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20US{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20and{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20global{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}20tide.html
11. SCOTT SIMON, Can The World Engineer A Cooler Climate?, www.npr.org, August 24, 2013.www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=215097283
12. Badescu, V., Cathcart, R.B., Bolonkin, A.A., Paulescu, M., Gravila, P., “Macro-engineering Australia’s Lake Eyre with imported seawater”, 2013, International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development 12 (3), pp. 264-284.
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