Links to Church and White sea level data
May 9, 2011I have written several posts about Church and White Sea level data and how it pertains t Rahmstorf sea level models.
It seems the Permanent Site for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) page for Church and White has eliminated the link for the 2009 version of Church and White data when it added the link for the 2011 version of their data. As of today, the PSMSL still archives the 2009 data, but does not provide the link.
Just so there will be no confusion, I will provide several links for each of the 2006, 2009, and 2011 versions of the Church and White data.
2006 version
- Abstract for associated paper: “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise,” GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L01602, 4 PP., 2006 doi:10.1029/2005GL024826
- Full PDF version of associated paper: “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise,” GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L01602, 4 PP., 2006 doi:10.1029/2005GL024826
- Sea level data archived at PSMSL (Columns: time, Global Mean Sea Level in mm, One-sigma error in mm)
- Sea level data archived at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This is a Zip file containing “church_white_grl_gmsl.txt” (Columns: time, Global Mean Sea Level in mm, One-sigma error in mm)
- Sea level data archived by me on 4/27/11.
The above three archives of the 2006 version of Church and White sea level data were identical as of 4/27/11.
2009 version
- This version did not have an associated paper. There used to be a link and a short explanation at the PSMSL page for Church and White, but both are now gone. But the data still exists as of 4/27/11.
- Sea level data archived at PSMSL (Columns: time, Global Mean Sea Level in mm, One-sigma error in mm)
- Sea level data archived by me on 4/27/11.
The above two archives of the 2009 version of Church and White sea level data were identical as of 4/27/11.
2011 version
- Full PDF version of associated paper: “Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st Century.” Surveys in Geophysics, (2011)
- Sea level data archived at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This is a Zip file containing 9 files. “aa_read_me.txt” explains the contents of the other 8 files, which include text and comma separated value files of satellite altimeter monthly and yearly data and monthly and yearly versions Church’s and White’s reconstruction.
- Sea level data in the form of the same Zip file as above, but archived by me.
- The 9 individual files from the Zip file
- “aa_read_me.txt” Church and White Reconstruction, 1880 to 2009, monthly
- “CSIRO_Recons_gmsl_mo_2011.txt” Church and White Reconstruction, 1880 to 2009, monthly
- “CSIRO_Recons_gmsl_mo_2011.csv” Church and White Reconstruction, 1880 to 2009, monthly, comma separated values
- “CSIRO_Recons_gmsl_yr_2011.txt” Church and White Reconstruction, 1880 to 2009, yearly
- “CSIRO_Recons_gmsl_yr_2011.csv” Church and White Reconstruction, 1880 to 2009, yearly, comma separated values
- “CSIRO_ALT_gmsl_mo_2011.txt” Satellite altimeter data, 1993 to 2009, monthly
- “CSIRO_ALT_gmsl_mo_2011.csv” Satellite altimeter data, 1993 to 2009, monthly, comma separated values
- “CSIRO_ALT_gmsl_yr_2011.txt” Satellite altimeter data, 1993 to 2009, yearly
- “CSIRO_ALT_gmsl_yr_2011.csv” Satellite altimeter data, 1993 to 2009, yearly, comma separated values
If any of these links break, please alert me by leaving a comment.
Climate Sanity 
[Please moderate out my original post which swapped name/email. – Thanks!]
Ah, I finally find a competent site concerned in detail with what I highly suspected was a case of “lying with statistics” about sea level rise. I happened to finally browse hundreds of individual tide gauge records (http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/), and observer bias worries were soon dissipated by the overwhelming majority of century old records failing to show any meaningful trend change at all, at least by eye, worldwide. How to best present this argument however, I am still at a loss to determine, especially since my programming skills are quite rusty and were limited to Basic, Perl and Mathematica with a bit of Postscript thrown in to output graphic art.
So I just made a quick poster graphic to entice others to view actual records themselves:
I notice in the latest Church/White article that the simple average of tide gauges shows much less exponential curve rather then two linear trends that show the the rate of rise has not changed since 1930, which I have extracted from their chart here:
My eventual audience for a presentation in poster graphic form are layperson readers of news articles that allow reader comments. The idea is to best present the issue that few single site tide gauges show “unprecedented” and “worse than expected” surges in sea level.
It’s amazing how a “correction” sneaks into the Church/White paper.
I keep finding claims that sea level rise is surging due to the systematic mismatch between tide records and satellites, by the artifice of ignoring recent tide gauge data and replacing it by slight of hand with the satellite data, usually expressed verbally with weasel words like “suggests”. This NASA site just chops tide data off after 1994 though, then shows satellite data from 1994 on:
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm#seaIce
Oh, wow, on my chart I had neglected data before 1930 since I’d always seen an inflection point there in global average plots of sea level, but a quick line fit (by eye) shows what I see in the individual tide gauge records themselves: no trend change!
Thanks, Church & White! They of course plot this simple average of tide gauges as difficult to discern yellow, so I made it black.
I’ve done much the same as NikFromNYC and get similar results. Here’s a link to an overlay for comparison:
I used median values by coast line.
I’ve also subtracted out the Peltier Glacial Isostatic data (not shown here) also available from a link at the PSMSL site and all it does is increase the slope overall. Getting the tide gage data to deviate from the basic 1.7 mm/yr and come up with 3+ mm/yr these last few decades is a mystery.
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