A couple of years ago, it was announced, without a shred of a doubt, that the town where I live, Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast, would be flooded due to the rise of the sea level – 1m over 100 years.
So I started digging in available open source data on tidal observation, in this case from the BODC – British Oceanographic Data Center. They cover 90+ years of observations, at tens of stations, one point per half hour.
Speaking of a time series
I analysed 5 433 000 data points.
I did this 10 times over under pressure from Dr Romke Bontekoe, who insisted on varying a parameter – the spectrum width – in order to eliminate the possibility of generating artefacts.
So in total 54 330 000 data points where handled.
The results are shown in the video.
Conclusions
I can sleep quietly: if sea level rises by 1m over 100 years, we will see a strong signal in about 30 years, … and I won’t be around anymore.
With thanks to
- BODC
- Dr Romke Bontekoe who increased my effort by a factor 10
- Michiel van Mens looking after the looks and feel
- Wolfram Language – aka Mathematica – for making this study easy, fast and fun (sort of)
