The Search for Acceleration, part 10, US Gulf Coast

This is part 9 of a series of posts in which I am searching for a large acceleration in sea level rise rate in the latter part of the 20th century.  Such a rise rate is needed  to reconcile the 1.8 mm per year average rise rate for the century attributed to tide gauge data and the approximately 3 mm per year rise rate for the tail end of the century attributed to the satellite data.

U.S. Gulf Coast

This region  has 4 tide gauge sites with at least 90% data completion between 1950 and 2008.  Three of the sites have data back to 1930 or earlier .  I will analyse this data in my usual manner: detrending, weighting, averaging and derivatives.

This slideshow shows my standard analysis.

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Conclusion

One thing is certain from the above graphs: the sea level rise rate in the US Gulf Coast region has not shown an acceleration in the last part of the 20th century or the 21st century. The rise rate reached a peak in the 1940s and has been dropping since around 1970.

Keep in mind that there are many factors that contribute to the rise rate in this region.  Subsidence is the primary cause, and subsidence itself has multiple components.

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