The National Science Foundation noticed that the oceans actually fell 7 mm .

Their explanation?  For two years, three different weather patterns combined in such a way that torrents of rain fell on Australia, and that water mostly soaked in and didn't return to the sea.  Hence, the fall in sea level of seven millimeters.

Now what they don't tell us is how this tiny change in sea level is measured, and what the margin of error is in their technique, whatever it is.

The normal rise in sea level, they say, is three millimeters a year.

Since this period of heavy Australian rain ended, the seas have risen ten millimeters.

Some obvious errors in their report:

   "As the climate warms, the world's oceans have been rising in recent decades by just over three millimeters annually (emphasis added)"

There is scientific consensus, objectively measured, that the climate hasn't warmed for nearly two decades.  Might not this cooling have explained the drop in sea level?  Is not antarctic sea ice at a record level, more than they have ever been able to measure? They don't address this, after making the false statement noted above.

  "Fasullo believes there may have been a similar event in 1973-74, which was another time of record flooding.

But modern observing instruments did not exist then, making it impossible to determine what took place in the atmosphere and whether it affected sea level rise.

"Luckily we've got great observations now," Fasullo says. "We need to maintain these observing platforms to understand our climate system."

So sometime between 1974 and today, techniques of measurement have improved to the extent that now the "scientists" can make sweeping, error free determinations of what causes the seas to rise and fall.   Right.  Let's use just a few years of measurement to make a sweeping determination that "global warming" which now hasn't existed nearly since the seventies, is causing sea rise, even though seas didn't rise for at least two years during the short window when scientists had accurate measurements, and have now suddenly and without explainable cause risen three times the stated yearly average (10mm vs the average yearly rise of 3mm).  Also, the "scientists don't address how much of the supposedly significant rainfall in Australia evaporated vs soaked in, and what area of land actually doesn't drain back to the sea, and what the real rainfall there was as compared to normal years.  It would seem that the significant number would be the difference, with some accounting made for evaporation (which would return the water to the cloud-rain cycle).  There is none of that, from what I can see, although more info might be in the article to be published soon.

Further, the research in question is partly funded by NASA, the home of famous global warming crank James Hanson.  Their participation thus makes the motives of these researchers somewhat suspect.  

Finally, no one mentions the margin of error of these techniques of measurement, which are important given we are dealing with a change of a few millimeters in a planetary sized body of water.  Is the margin a millimeter or two, or ten, or what?  Not gonna tell us. 

Nor do the "scientists" address the alternative possible explanations, such as the gigantic increase in sea ice in Antarctica. How much offset was there for the rain from the increased ice?  I think the real reason is that they have absolutely no idea how much seawater is locked up in sea ice, nor do they know how much extra water is coming from the melting glaciers, nor how much water is locked up in clouds.  

It is really all speculation, with a hysterical, chicken little threat that disaster looms, if we don't do something. That something is invariably to give up more freedoms, more money, and more life style to the chicken littles, so they can make those decisions for us. That is the real agenda here, supported by shoddy science like that exhibited in this study.