A 1782–1794 sea level record at Trieste (northern Adriatic)

Abstract

The physician Leonardo Vordoni recorded sea heights at Trieste from 1782 to 1794 because of his interest in studying the connections between tides and the course of diseases that he attributed to the same forces. The data, expressed in Paris feet and inches (1 ft = 12 in. = 32.4845 cm), consist of heights measured on a pole, relative to the green algae belt corresponding to the mean high water. The measurements were reported in a manuscript that was recently found in the correspondence received by Giuseppe Toaldo, an astronomer in Padua. The observations were made twice a day until June 1791 and more frequently afterwards; the data from July 1791 onwards reasonably describe both the astronomical tide and the inverted-barometer (IB) effect. The low frequency of observations and poor metadata information seriously limit the scientific value of the data set, which, therefore, has mainly a historical value. In comparisons with modern data, the amplitude of sea level variations appears rather large, as if a unit shorter than the Paris foot was used. Moreover, an anomalously large decadal trend exists, which might be due to the pole sinking into the sea floor. The sea heights were digitized and are available through SEANOE (SEA scieNtific Open data Edition; https://doi.org/10.17882/62598; Raicich, 2019a).