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One year and a half ago, we had noticed that the rate of sea level rise given by the University of Colorado (satellite data) was going down. It had gone down from 3.3 ± 0.4 mm/year to 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year. This last value can be seen in the first image above. This October, the rate of rise has declined again! Now it has come down to 3.1 ± 0.4 mm/year, as can be seen in the second image above! The image properties shows that the image was uploaded to the site on October 6th, 20:45 GMT, which is confirmed by their release notes. This rate has been steadily going down since the beginning of 2006, when it reached the highest value, at a rate of 3.5 mm/year.
This means, to say the least, that the rate of rise of sea level is declining. Nothing really new, as we have noticed in the past. But this is a hard blow on alarmists, who have been promoting accelerated sea level rise 1 2. But what is worse, and can be seen clearly in the graph, is that the decline is even greater in recent years. Since Jason-1 data is being used, from 2002 onwards, the rate of rise is only 2.3 mm/year, only slightly higher that the whole 20th century rate of rise. Expect more declines in the near future!
