Wednesday 11 March 2009

Sea Level rises by 2100 according to the BBC

I couldn't sleep last night, so worried by the BBC's report yesterday that the latest predictions of sea level rises by 2100 will exceed previous predictions. I already debunked it once, that the latest prediction is only 1m whilst the previous prediction was 1.5m. But maybe I'd gotten it wrong, I'd misquoted.

So I looked up all the BBC articles that talk about predictions in sea level rises since 2000 and plotted a graph.



Can you imagine my relief to find that actually the current prediction of a 1 metre rise by 2100 is pretty much in the middle of the range of predictions that the BBC have reported.

My next thing to get neurotic about is that 1m rise, is it from 2009 levels or from the same level that predictions were made from in 2000.

Just how much have sea levels risen since 2000?

**Update**
URLs for BBC stories
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1997/sci/tech/global_warming/32958.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/368892.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1581457.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2002/boston_2002/1825283.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2219001.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2816859.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2.hi/south_asia/3930765.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4490000/newsid_4494200/newsid_4494263.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4565935.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4651876.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4834806.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6405359.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6525069.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7148137.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7197379.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7195752.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7201501stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7935159.stm

Slightly more polished graph

1 comment:

  1. That is a tip top chart! Did you ever find out whether sea levels rose between 2000 and 2009? I bet they bloody well didn't, or if they did it was within the margin of error.

    ReplyDelete