Acceleration of the global coastal sea level rise during the 20th century re-evaluated

Abstract

In contrast to some of the recent investigations, this study shows that far less number of tide gauge stations experienced statistically significant accelerations in sea level rise during the 20th century. Twenty-seven tide gauge stations with century long data were analyzed for the presence of an acceleration in global sea level rise using a kinematic model inclusive of a secular trend, acceleration, and compounded periodicities with autocorrelated random effects. Eight out of twenty-seven stations revealed statistically significant but slow sea level rise acceleration (p<0.01) within the 0.01-0.02 mm/yr2 range compared to the sixteen stations with accelerations estimated using the models by the previous investigations,which did not account for the compounded periodicities and autocorrelations in sea level changes.

Keywords

• climate change
• climate warming
• sea level acceleration
• sea level rise
• mean sea level
• psmsl tide gauge data. confounders. autocorrelated disturbances