Climate change could bring ‘king tide’ to Seattle every day

“The damaging tides are magnified partly because sea level in Seattle has risen by 8 inches over the past century.”

“Following Monday’s highest tides ever recorded in Seattle, which sent waves spilling onto 100 properties in West Seattle, city climate-change watchers say the area could be in for more of the same — or worse — in years to come.” [Yakima Herald]

9 responses to “Climate change could bring ‘king tide’ to Seattle every day

  1. Seattle tide gauge sea level has been almost flat since 1980, as in 0.0 mm per year.

    Satellite altimeter readings off the coast of Seattle show no trend, as in 0.0 mm per year, for the dataset’s entire 2 decades.

    What are they pearl-clutching about again?

  2. Are sea walls illegal or something??

  3. I don’t get it. If average sea level rose 8 inches in Seattle, wouldn’t it have risen 8 inches all over the world? Is the sea water in Seattle so viscous that it doesn’t flow into the rest of the Pacific (and Atlantic etc…)?

  4. sea levels rising? or land levels sinking (subsidence)?

  5. Below is a link to Dr Cliff Mass’ analysis of the so-called King tides. He is a professor of meteorology at U of WA.

    Dr Mass believes that AGW is occurring, but he is not an alarmist and draws clear distinctions between weather and climate. He concludes his blog post stating: ”


  6. Answer: “city climate-change watchers”

    Question: What’s worse than watching grass grow?

  7. “Sea level rise” is a local phenomenon, affected by tectonic uplift and subsidence as well as alluvial soil compaction. Tectonically the Seattle area is VERY active – the earthquake in the 900-930 CE left many persistent traces.
    The Solent between England and the Isle of Wight (a very tectonically inactive area) demonstrates a sea level rise of at least 11 m in 8000 years since the end of the last ice age into the current interglacial age. Wooden buildings found under 11 m of sea water have been carbon dated to 6000 BCE.
    That’s at least 13.8 cm (5.4 in)/century – a fairly good estimate of *global* sea level change that precedes the industrial age by 7800 years or so, and is connected solely to entirely non-anthropogenic causes.
    If Seattle’s rate of uplift/subsidence does not match that figure, it is because the Seattle Fault (and probably others) are building up stress for another sizeable earthquake like the one 1100 years ago that the Native Americans of the area are *still* talking about.

  8. The highest EVER recorded tide in Seattle was a 14.51′ on December 17, 2012. The highest previously recorded high tide for Seattle was 14.49′ in January 1983. That’s 0.02′ or 1/4″ in thirty years. Scientists claim that sea level has risen about 8″ in the last 100 years. Wouldn’t one think that at least a third, or more, of that 8″ increase would have occurred in the last thirty, or so, years if man made global warming is having such a dramatic effect on a rise in sea level. None of these statistics make any sense at all nor could one predict that in the next thirty years sea level will rise 2′ to 4′ if the 1/4′ during the past thirty years is correct.
    I’d welcome some convincing evidence of the truth whatever it may be.

  9. correction = 1/4″, not 1/4′, during the past thirty years.

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