1. Application of Long Term Records from NOAA’s National Water Level Observation Network NOAA Climate Observation Program 3’rd Annual System Review
April 25, 2005
Stephen Gill and Mike Szabados
NOAA/ NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services

2. The NOAA National Ocean Service National Water Level Program
Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services
OPERATIONAL STATUS
- GLOSS Support
- Tsunami program Support
APPLICATIONS
- IOOS
- Impacts of Sea Level Rise and Inundation Mapping
- The U.S. Climate Change Science Program
- Habitat Restoration
- Updates of National Tidal Datum Epochs
- Long-term Changes in Tidal Characteristics
- Satellite Altimetry Missions
- Storm Tide Exceedance Probabilties

3. THE NWLON PROVIDES FOR GEOPHYSICAL TIME SERIES

4. Operational Status of NOAA National Ocean Service Tide Stations
in Support of GLOSS Activities (
175 NWLON stations fully operational with long-term sustained
operation, documented calibration and vertical control, and routine
data quality control and product delivery.
29 NWLON stations on latest official GLOSS list.
54 NWLON stations contribute to JASL Archive (Hourly Heights)
maintained by UHSLC
18 NWLON stations identified as critical to sea level trends (1997 Workshop)
A special sea level report is being prepared for these stations. Plans are for
to have this report completed for the full 62 sea level reference stations
NWLON meets or exceeds GLOSS operating requirements. NOAA NGWLMS
configurations are used by many countries.

5. The NOAA National Ocean Service National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON)
Operational Status

6. Planned Additions to the NWLON for Tsunami Warning - Caribbean

7. Building the National Backbone: A Key Federal Role
7. U.S. Contributions to the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)
Building the National Backbone: A Key Federal Role
The national backbone provides the observational density, timeliness and locations sufficient to detect and predict changes in environmental parameters at a national scale.
Data from the national backbone can be used at all scales, but most importantly supplies the essential information for national policy formulation
National Water Level Observing Network – an example of a Backbone component
“End-to-End”
Built through local, regional and national partnerships
Provides real-time and archival data for a core set of parameters
Supplies data to meet national and regional resource management needs
(Slide 6, Building the National Backbone)
No funding will be sustained without showing integration and the increased value this provides. Congress is putting considerable pressure on Ocean.US and the federal agencies to get a comprehensive plan in place for a national system. The implications are self-evident -continued local earmarks are not guaranteed. In a nutshell, there's no future if we don't work toward a national integrated system.

8. SEA LEVELS ONLINE WEB PRODUCT
Relative Sea Level Trends
Monthly Mean Sea Level Anomalies
50-year mean Sea level Trends

9. Regional Trends of Relative Mean Sea Level From NOAA Tide Stations

10. LOWER CHESAPEAKE BAY : Variations In Relative
Annual Mean Sea Level thru 2000
Linear Trend: +4.2mm/year
Mean sea level has risen about 300mm (1 ft.)
relative to the land since 1927
Elevation relative to bench
mark (meters)
Time (years)

11. VDATUM: TOOL FOR VERTICAL DATUM TRANSFORMATION
3-D Datums
Orthometric Datums
Tidal Datums
NAVD 88, NGVD 29
WGS 84, NAD 83 (86)
MSL
MHHW,MHW, MTL, MLW, MLLW

14. North Carolina Sea Level Rise Project
Ecological Impacts of Sea Level Change
North Carolina Sea Level Rise Project
Create a DEM
To assess
Sea Level Rise
NOAA
Bathymetry
Integrated topo/
Bathy DEM
Land
Elevations
Areas inundated
with a 1.0 m SLR

15. The NOAA National Ocean Service National Water Level Program,
Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services
6. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program
Question 9.2: What are the current and potential future impacts of
global environmental variability and change on human welfare,
what factors influence the capacity of human societies to respond
to change, and how can resilience be increased and vulnerability reduced?
The Deliverable: Elevation maps depicting areas vulnerable to sea level rise
and planning maps depicting how state and local governments could respond
to sea level rise. The U.S. EPA provides a low resolution topographic product
(1-3 meter contours). The project deliverable is to produce a high resolution
(< 1.0m) contoured digital elevation product from which to overlay sea level
trends suing a NOA North Carolina Sea Level Project as a national template.

16. CCSP Deliverable Is Executable
CCSP Deliverable: Sea Level Rise
Director: Chet Koblinsky
PM: Michael Szabados
As of Dec. 31
Prime Contractors:
Performance Parameters G Y
Schedule (FY)
CCSP Deliverable:
Coastal elevations and sensitivity to sea level
rise. (Decision-support assessment/synthesis
product in 2006)
Task Name
FY04
FY05
FY06
FY07
Quarter 1 2 3 4
Prospectus
Product Scoping
Drafts and Reviews
Product Release
Schedule
Approved
Est.d Completion Date
Variance
03/01/2006
Milestone
(Estimated) / Actual
NC Pilot Study
06/01/2005
Review of SLR Efforts with EPA and USGS
1/18/2005
Prospectus
10/01/2004draft
Task Completion
Task Y G
Budget/Funding, $K
Key Issues/Risks
Issues:
The CCSP product is desired to be on a national scale. NOAA, EPA and USGS are co-leads. EPA is developing national low resolution maps of coastal vulnerability to sea level rise; however, these maps are of insufficient resolution to be of practical value to local coastal managers for impact studies.
EPA and NOAA agree that a national plan with desired resolution will not be a reality by 2005; but pilot studies like North Carolina will be used to develop national template. Final consensus on the scope of CCSP product is pending.
Risks:
NOAA has not identified resources necessary to begin a national effort at the desired resolution. The CCSP report will be a technical review and not an implemented project.
For NC pilot project, NOAA is developing higher resolution, digital elevation base maps of potential inundation, assessments of potential ecosystem and infrastructure impacts, and focused sea level analyses.
Final consensus on the scope of the CCSP product is pending between NOAA, EPA, and USGS. A compromise will likely be reached, in that the national focus of the product will be limited to the low resolution maps from EPA. NOAA will provide a case study on North Carolina pilot project to demonstrate the greater potential of higher resolution maps.
Activity
FY04
FY05
FY06
FY07
FY08
Prospectus
Product Scoping
100
Drafts and Reviews 20
Product release
CCSP Report 50
CCSP Deliverable Is Executable

17. Application to Marsh Restoration Qwuloolt Marsh, Ebey Slough
Existing Elevations
Qwuloolt Marsh, Ebey Slough
Marysville, WA
Variations in Relative Mean Sea Level – Seattle, WA
Here is an example of the Qwuloolt marsh in Marysville, WA. For this project, we worked with the Office of Response and Restoration within NOAA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Here is the sea level curve for Seattle going back to There is an upward trend of 2.26 mm/yr. We are considering this to be the same sea level trend for the marsh. This spike here represents the 1983 El Nino event. For this project, unlike many restoration projects where there is proactive restoration such as planting, the original hope was to breach the existing levees and let nature take its course. This map shoes the critical elevation contours of the existing site to be 4 ft, 8, ft, & 12 ft all relative to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 or NAVD88. The 4 ft contour in green represents the marsh surface. The 8 ft contour is blue and there is an existing development to the NW. The 12 ft contour in red represents the existing levees and there is a new development going right up to the east. The MHW datum was computed to be 8.3 ft. So that means that if the levees were breached, the marsh would become a pond and the development in the NW would be flooded. We also estimated the highest tide to be 12.3 ft based on comparisons with Seattle during the ’83 El Nino event. So that means that during such an event, the new development to the east would be flooded. This info was enough for the USACE to determine that levees needed to be raises in these areas in order to protect the neighbors from flooding.
A case study in the Guidance Document.
Linear trend: mm/yr
Photo: Qwuloolt Marsh courtesy P. Leon

18. IDEALIZED CHANGE OF TIDAL DATUM EPOCHS
ACTUAL
IDEALIZED CHANGE OF TIDAL DATUM EPOCHS
EPOCH
We need a change in Epoch to keep water levels and in turn depths up to date…. If we had continued on the epoch we would be nearly half a foot off or more in certain areas such as Louisiana, Texas, and Alaska

19. 60-78 Epoch 83-01 Epoch MSL= 1.490 MSL= 1.542 Epoch Change 0.051 m
MSL Linear Trend
Epoch Change
0.051 m

20. Marine Boundaries in the U.S.
Tidal datums, derived from water level measurements, have traditionally been important primarily for navigation and shoreline boundary purposes. For example, water level measurements were needed for charting coastal waters and to fulfill the need to establish a plane of reference, or a datum plane, to which the water level observations and tide prediction tables could be referred. Similarly, soundings taken during hydrographic surveys could also be referred to such a datum. Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) is NOAA Chart Datum, and Mean High Water (MHW) represents the shoreline on nautical charts (Tidal Datums and Their Applications, 2001). Tidal datums also provide baseline determinations for the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, as well as boundaries between private, state, and federal ownership and jurisdiction.

21. Monitoring of Long-term Changes in Tidal Characteristics
Changes in Range of Tide
Changes in Time of Tide - HWI

22. Applications to Research into Global Sea Level
Figures 2. Local comparison of hydrographic and tide gauge measured sea level
change near (2a) San Francisco & San Diego, (2b) Honolulu, (2c) Balboa: (2a)
As in Figure 1, but hydrographic observations limited to 4400 km by 1100 km area
adjacent to gauge sites at San Francisco and San Diego; (2b) to 1100 km by 1100
km area centered on gauge site at Honolulu; (2c) to 800 km by 1400 km area
adjacent to gauge site at Balboa, Panama.
From: Mass and Volume Contributions to 20th Century Global Sea Level Rise
Laury Miller and Bruce C. Douglas - Nature

23. APPLICATIONS TO SATELLITE ALTIMETRY MISSIONS

24. The NOAA National Ocean Service National Water Level Program,
Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services
5. Satellite Altimeter Mission Support
NOAA has operated a tide station in cooperation with JPL/NASA
on Platform Harvest since 1992 in support of TOPEX/Poseidon
and Jason-1 providing data for altimeter evaluation and closure analyses.
Redundant pressure gauge systems provide independent sea level estimates
at the time of every 10-day overpass.

25. Corsica/Harvest Sea-Surface Height Bias Estimates
A Decade of Monitoring TOPEX/POSEIDON and Jason-1
Source – Bruce Haines

26. Monthly Highest and Lowest Water Levels with 99%, 50%, 10%, and 1% Annual Exceedance Probability Levels

28. MEAN SEA LEVEL TREND AT BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
The mean sea level trend is 3.12 millimeters/year (1.02 feet/century) with a standard error of 0.08 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data
from 1902 to 1999.

29. Comparison of Storm Surge at Baltimore Maryland
1933 Hurricane
The Two Most
Extreme Events
2004 Hurricane
Isabel

30. 1933 HURRICANE 2003 HURRICANE ISABEL
Comparison of Observed and Predicted Water Levels During Two Most Extreme Hurricanes at Baltimore
1933 HURRICANE
2003 HURRICANE
ISABEL

31. Monthly Highest Observed Water Levels at Baltimore Relative to Highest
Water Level Observed During Hurricane Isabel
1933 Hurricane shows lower absolute water level, but when corrected
for sea level rise, shows a higher value than 2003 during Hurricane Isabel:
Thus, at Baltimore, the 1933 Hurricane actually had a stronger storm surge
than Hurricane Isabel even though it was lower in elevation relative to the land
due to sea level rise since 1933.

32. APPLICATIONS ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY OPERATING STANDARDS:
Station Operation
- sustained long-term O&M
- continuous data
- documented vertical stability
Vertical Datum Reference
- up-to-date references to latest tide (and water level) and geodetic datums
- water levels are known relative to the land and local bench marks
- precise connection to geodetic datums
Data Collection, Processing and Data Delivery
- data and system quality control on 24x7 basis
- real-time data and near-real time data are available with QC flags
- monthly and yearly data products are routinely derived and applied
- web-based delivery of all data and products
- data archival system