Global Science Report is a weekly feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set to release its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the physical science of climate change at the conclusion on its editorial meeting in Stockholm scheduled from September 23–26th.
A version of its Summary for Policymakers (SPM)—perhaps the most influential portion of the report as it is the widest read—has been “leaked” to generate media interest in the upcoming release. It certainly has, but perhaps not in the manner intended. The leaked SPM has revealed a document so flawed and removed from current science that it has been described as not only being “obsolete on the day that it is released, but that it will be dead wrong as well” (okay, we wrote that).
Examples already abound as to the problems evident in the leaked SPM. Here we add another—this one having to do with the recent rate of sea level rise.
In the Summary for Policymakers section of its Fourth Assessment Report (published in 2007) the IPCC had this to say about the rate of sea level rise:
Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961–2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear.
Since then, we have highlighted numerous findings in the scientific literature that present strong evidence that the increase in the rate of sea level rise since 1993 is largely not an increase in the longer-term trend (or at least not from human-caused climate change which is the IPCC’s implication) and that the short-term rate of sea level rise has been slowing, and returning back towards the long-term average.
But the IPCC’s heart remains hardened.