Ocean views

Published on 30/07/2012 00:00

Thanks to Roy Turnbull (Letters, 28 July) for correcting my “Freudian slip” in stating University of Columbia instead of University of Colorado. He goes on to quote various sea level rises from 1900 to current time, indicating an accelerating rise in sea levels. These figures would presumably include tide gauge readings from before the satellite era.

Like most things with climate-related issues, there are contradictory views on just about everything, and I would like to quote Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, the head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. His view is that the current upward trend in satellite measured sea levels has been introduced through an “adjustment” to these measurements: “So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modelling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it.”

The so-called acceleration quoted by Mr Turnbull could as likely be a result of computer adjustments as real increases, if Dr Mörner is correct. While Mr Turnbull refers to “many factors influence the extent of Antarctic sea ice”, it would seem to me that the two main factors are recognised as being ocean heat and wind directions. As I understand it, winds do not play a big role in thinning out or compacting sea ice in the Antarctic, so the main factor is surely the heat content in the ocean. With the sea ice extent being larger than the average for 1979-2000, it is reasonable to state that the Antarctic Ocean is not warming. There would appear to be no need to panic over sea levels or a risk of loss of ice in Antarctica.

John Peter

Monks Road
Airdrie, Lanarkshire