An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal questions the conclusions of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine analysis, issued earlier this year, of a draft of the federal government’s U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report (CSSR).  The National Academies’ analysis -- authored by a committee of 11 renowned experts and subjected to the Academies’ rigorous independent external peer-review process -- is a comprehensive assessment of the draft CSSR.  The analysis provides more than 100 pages of comments on the draft CSSR with the intention of improving the accuracy of the final version of the CSSR, released by the federal government today.   The National Academies stand by their analysis.  In particular, we stand by the committee’s conclusion that the CSSR chapter on sea-level rise accurately reflects the current scientific literature.  Scientists have high confidence in recent estimates of sea-level rise, because multiple lines of corroborating evidence are available, including data from satellites, tidal gauges, and a global array of thousands of profiling floats.  Together these lines of evidence provide strong support for the conclusion that sea-level rise is accelerating because of the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, along with continued thermal expansion of ocean waters.  The committee’s analysis of the draft CSSR can be read here.

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