They must think we're stupid

[JoJo]

 
Water is self leveling for instance if you have a tub of bath water and you get in it the water will rise evenly around the tub. If you lay down in it will also rise evenly.
 The Delmarva Peninsula, Florida and Louisiana are sinking. With this sinking some people are saying the water is rising at  only in these areas due to man made global warming.
 As I see it the water would self level through the ocean, the rise would be to these areas sinking.


  https://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2015/07/29/usgs-the-chesapeake-bay-region-is-sinking-while-the-sea-rises/

 

Sea level is rising rapidly around the Chesapeake Bay. Faster actually, than nearly any other place on the East Coast of North America, and only a few spots along the Gulf Coast are recording a faster rate. The reason has been suspected for quite a while, but now a new study published in the journal of the Geological Society of America has confirmed the cause, and the news is not good. The paper  is titled Pleistocene Sea Levels in The Chesapeake Bay Region and Their Implications for the Next Century. You can can read the entire paper here.
The rapid sea-level rise is already affecting the barrier island that is Assateague National Seashore.

The rapid sea-level rise is already seriously affecting the barrier islands like Assateague National Seashore.

World-wide, the sea level is now rising at a rate of about 1.7 mm per year, but in the Chesapeake Bay region it’s double that, at 3.4 mm per year. The question has been whether this is just a short-term rate that will soon disappear, or will the faster rise continue. If it continues, then this will have a serious impact on cities like Washington, Baltimore, and the entire Delmarva Peninsula, with its popular beaches. The rise in sea level on Delmarva is a result of not just more water in the ocean, but also because the land itself is sinking. In areas like Louisiana and Florida, the sinking is the result of ground water withdrawals (and oil and gas exploration as well). Here on Delmarva though, the answer has to do with ice.

Ice long melted.
USGS imaging is able to see the river channel of the Susquehannah River when it flowed through what is now Blackwater NWR during the last ice age. Sea level was much lower then and there was no Chesapeake Bay. When the glaciers melted the sea rose and drowned the river valley, leaving the present day Chesapeake Bay.

USGS imaging is able to see the river channel of the Susquehanna River when it flowed through what is now Blackwater NWR during the last ice age. Sea level was much lower then, and there was no Chesapeake Bay. When the glaciers melted the sea rose and drowned the river valley, leaving the present day Chesapeake.

The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, and for a hundred thousand years before the glaciers melted there was a slab of ice over the northern U.S. that extended down to Pennsylvania. That ice pushed the ground downward into the mantle of soft/hot rock below. As the ground was depressed to the north, the area around the Chesapeake rose up in what called a forebulge. You can see this fairly easily when you push down on a soft mattress, and this forebulge has been slowly coming back down since the ice melted. USGS scientists looked at sediment cores takes from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and have determined the sea levels in the region back to the last warm period and have concluded that the land subsidence around the Chesapeake Bay is likely to continue for hundreds of years.
The fast rising sea level means that coastal towns will have to spend much more money on beach re-nourishment in the future, or face losing summer tourism.

The fast rising sea level means coastal towns will have to spend much more money on beach re-nourishment in coming years, or face losing summer tourism.

They then looked at how this will affect sea level rise over the rest of this century, and predict that the Chesapeake Bay region will see significant more sea level rise than other regions. Here is the conclusion of the paper with my highlights (GIA=Glacial Isostatic Adjustment which is the sinking of the forebulge.)

Ongoing GIA-driven subsidence in the Chesapeake Bay region challenges a region already threatened by sea-level rise. At the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, we use rate consistency to predict ~0.16 m of subsidence for the region in the twenty-first century (using twentieth-century values from Boon and others [2010] that presumably include the effects of groundwater withdrawal). The likely range of average global sea-level rise for the twenty-first century is 0.33–0.82 m, based on a non-aggressive climate mitigation policy (IPCC, 2013).

Superimposing this sea level rise estimate over 0.16 m of subsidence yields a total predicted Rel. Sea Level rise of 0.49–0.98 m for the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge by AD 2100. These are minimum estimates; several lines of evidence suggest that sea levels will rise more quickly in the Chesapeake Bay region. Recent tide gauge analyses indicate the acceleration of sea-level rise in the North Atlantic in recent decades, possibly due to dynamic ocean circulation processes (Yin et al., 2010; Boon, 2012; Ezer and Corlett, 2012; Sallenger et al., 2012). If this acceleration continues, it could induce an additional rise of 15 cm for the Chesapeake Bay and Washington D.C. areas by AD 2100 (Yin et Figure 5.

[grizz]

ding ding ding we have a winner 

 

[Kbop]

@JoJo
i know that some low lying areas are sinking but the ocean is rising too.
over the micro scale water is self leveling.  over large scales there can be differences in several feet.
One is thermal expansion - another is storm surge.
think of it this way - water is self leveling but there can be a time lag as it sloshes about.  one phenomenon to think about - in self leveling water - is the equatorial bulge.  the ocean climbs up hill, a noticeable amount, at the equator.  between the gravitational forces of the sun and moon and the earth's rotation, we get tides.
-
just saying the two aren't mutually exclusive.  A really good example is near Anchorage AK - there are tidal differences in excess of 40 feet.  But over the last decade a noticeable change is occuring.  The highest high tides are getting a little higher.  The lowest low tides there are getting higher too - simple deduction, the ocean has gotten a little higher.  its only fractions of an inch per year - But noticeable.

the major problem i see with oceans rising is the effect isn't linear.  it can stay stable for centuries and change quickly (over decades) to a new steady state. 
 

[JohnyMac]

With the magnetic field shifting east, I wonder how this plays with the tides.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/earth-magnetic-field-flip-north-south-poles-science/

[Kbop]

good question.
 

[pkveazey]

OK, boys and girls, this is my take on the magnetic poles and east coast water levels. Way back in the early 1970's I got really interested in Geology and Minerals. I have a friend who is a Geologist and he told me, way back then, all about how core samples from the Mid Atlantic range show that the magnet poles have shifted hundreds of times. Since nobody had a pencil to record the last shift, we don't know what happened. Apparently it wasn't a big deal. Now, as to the East coast sinking, he also told me that the east coast and the west coast rock up and down like a really slow moving seesaw. We are in a east coast down movement so the next time an environmental whacko tells you that we are causing it, just poke them in the eye with a stick.  

[Nemo]

And make sure its a sharp stick.

Nemo

[Rogue-Metalsmith]

We are in a east coast down movement so the next time an environmental whacko tells you that we are causing it, just poke them in the eye with a stick.

 

It better be as Nemo said a dang sharp stick. nice one.

RM
 

[mechmedic]

Speaking to the storm surge point, we saw 10-12 foot storm surge when I was in New Bern as a part of the Hurricane Florence relief with the National Guard. It was insane. And the water rose stupid fast too. It was actually how we convinced quite a few families to leave.

[patriotman]

Speaking to the storm surge point, we saw 10-12 foot storm surge when I was in New Bern as a part of the Hurricane Florence relief with the National Guard. It was insane. And the water rose stupid fast too. It was actually how we convinced quite a few families to leave.

That was the worst part of Sandy as well. That storm surge was an absolute killer and left a LOT of sand when it receded.

[JohnyMac]

Yupper gals and guys, a storm serge is what causes most of the damage in a hurricane. As many of you folks know...Sandy hit NJ, NYC, and then went up into the Adirondacks, Catskills, and Endless mountains. Well looking east, properties along the coast got a nasty storm serge including MrsMac and I.

We lived on the Sakonnet River, ~7-miles in from the coast and the combination of a high tide and storm serge lifted our house on the water right off its stilts and then when the tide went out dropped the house hard enough to break most of the joists. North of $90K and four months later, we had our house put back together.