Nils-Axel Mörner

Nils-Axel Mörner (born 1938), is the former head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. He retired in 2005. He was president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) Commission on Neotectonics (1981–1989). He headed the INTAS (International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union) Project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997–2003). He is a critic of the IPCC and the notion that the global sea level is rising. He was formerly the Chairman of INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and led the Maldives Sea Level Project.

Mörner has published books and papers on the interaction among isostasy and eustasy, the oscillating regional eustatic curve of NW Europe, the changing geoid concept, the redefinition of the concept of eustasy, the dynamic-rotational redistribution of oceanic water masses, and the interchange of angular momentum between the hydrosphere and solid Earth. His publications span over thirty years. His most cited paper has been cited about 30 times in early 2008.

Mörner disagrees with the view of future rise in sea level caused by global warming. Mörner's self-published 2007 20-page booklet The Greatest Lie Ever Told, refers to his belief that observational records of sea levels for the past 300 years that show variations - ups and downs, but no significant trend. This contrasts with the usual view that sea level rise has been occurring at 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) per year, over the last century. Mörner asserts that satellite altimetry data indicate a mean rise in the order of 1.0 mm/yr from 1986 to 1996, whereas most studies find a value around 3 mm/yr.

Mörner believes that sea level rise will not exceed 200 mm (7.9 in), within a range of either +100±100 mm or +50 ± 150 mm (2.0 ± 5.9 in), based on satellite data over the last 40 years and observational records over the last 300 years. In 2004 the president of INQUA wrote that INQUA did not subscribe to Mörner's views on climate change.

In 2000 he launched an international sea level research project in the Maldives which claims to demonstrate an absence of signs of any on-going sea level rise. Despite President Gayoom having spoken in the past about the impending dangers to his country, the Maldives, Mörner concluded that the people of the Maldives have in the past survived a higher sea level about 50–60 cm (1.6–2.0 ft), and there is evidence of a significant sea level fall in the last 30 years in that Indian Ocean area. However, these conclusions were disputed by due to lack of known mechanism for a fall in sea level and lack of supporting evidence.

In an interview in June, 2007, Mörner described research he had done in the Maldives that had been reported in the documentary Doomsday Called Off. Specifically, he mentioned a tree he had discovered growing close to the shoreline as evidence to support his claim that sea level had actually fallen rather than risen. He also alleged that the tree had been deliberately destroyed by a group of Australian researchers who were promoting the IPCC view that sea level was rising.

Mörner's claim that sea levels are not rising has been criticised for ignoring correctly calibrated satellite altimeter records all of which show that sea levels are rising.

In March 2013, open-access scientific publisher Copernicus Publications began publishing Pattern Recognition in Physics, of which Mörner was the co-editor-in-chief, along with Sid-Ali Ouadfeul. The journal was originally supposed to publish general physics-related research, but a study was nevertheless published in the journal in which the authors stated they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project." Due to both this study and what he called the "nepotistic" appointment of other scientists to the editorial board by Morner and Ouadfeul, Copernicus' managing director Martin Rasmussen terminated the journal in January 2014.

In March 2014 Ouadfeul reopened the journal under a different publisher.[2]