How often do we hear screams “head for the hills, sea levels are rising fast!” from alarmists like James Extreme Hansen of GISS and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)?

Yet, study after study show that there is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. All sea level fluctuations are within the normal range of variation. Nothing unusual is happening.

Port of Hamburg, Germany – Photo by Sebastian (Wikipeida)

The latest study is by Albrecht et al 2011, Determining sea level change in the German Bight appearing in the journal Ocean Dynamics 61: 2037-2050. Hat-tip: http://www.co2science.org.

The study focused on regional mean sea level (RMSL) in the German Bight of the North Sea. Albrecht et al based their work on homogenized annual mean sea level data for the period 1843-2008 acquired by 15 tide gauges.

According to CO2 Science, the authors determined that “regional mean sea level increased at rates between 1.64 and 1.74 mm/year with a 90% confidence range of 0.28 mm/year in each case.”  As for an acceleration in RMSL rise within the past few decades, CO2 Science writes:

…they note that in terms of 20-year trends, the most recent rates are ‘relatively high.’  However, they report that these rates “are not unusual and that similar rates could also be identified earlier in the record.”

I don’t recall seeing anything about this in the papers on on TV. The authors also note:

…the same conclusion concerning a possible acceleration in the recent past was drawn by Haigh et al. (2009) for the North Sea region of the English Channel.”

A press release by the Institute of Coastal Research at the Helmholtz... in Geesthacht, Germany also said the same 2 months ago, based on the same data I assume (emphasis added):

A group of Geesthacht coastal researchers, together with engineers from the University of Siegen, has recently carried out an analysis of the rise in sea levels in the German Bight. All reliable water level measurements were evaluated for the first time, in order to determine how the mean sea level of the German Bight has changed. According to this evaluation, the sea level rose by approx. 20 centimetres in the last century, in recent times higher than in the years around 1960. However, similarly high increases in levels also occurred in the first half of the 20th century. They are, therefore, not unusual.”

There seem to be natural cycles at work here.

And strange on how all the models show acceleration, but the real data do not.