Abstract
Abstract. The physician Leonardo Vordoni recorded sea heights at Trieste from 1782 to 1794 because of his interest in studying the connections between tides and the course of diseases that he attributed to the same forces. The data, expressed in Paris feet and inches (1 ft = 12 in. = 32.4845 cm), consist of heights measured on a pole, relative to the green algae belt corresponding to the mean high water. The measurements were reported in a manuscript that was recently found in the correspondence received by Giuseppe Toaldo, an astronomer in Padua. The observations were made twice a day until June 1791 and more frequently afterwards; the data from July 1791 onwards reasonably describe both the astronomical tide and the inverted-barometer (IB) effect. The low frequency of observations and poor metadata information seriously limit the scientific value of the data set, which, therefore, has mainly a historical value. In comparisons with modern data, the amplitude of sea level variations appears rather large, as if a unit shorter than the Paris foot was used. Moreover, an anomalously large decadal trend exists, which might be due to the pole sinking into the sea floor. The sea heights were digitized and are available through SEANOE (SEA scieNtific Open data Edition; https://doi.org/10.17882/62598; Raicich, 2019a).
Highlights
The communities living along the northern Adriatic coast have always been sensitive to sea level variations, in particular to the floods caused by storm surges
The most complete biography of Leonardo Vordoni can be found in Stancovich (1829); additional information is reported by Mainati (1818) and Lorenzutti (1859)
The Greek-born physician Leonardo Vordoni left a 12-yearlong time series of sea level observations at Trieste from 1 January 1782 to 12 October 1794, which, together with those observed in the Venice Lagoon in the same period, suggests a widespread interest in sea level variability in the northern Adriatic region in those times
Summary
The communities living along the northern Adriatic coast have always been sensitive to sea level variations, in particular to the floods caused by storm surges (locally known as acqua alta). Earlier observations of relative sea level exist, such as those made in the 1751–1769 period by Tommaso Temanza in Venice and in 1779–1792 by Giuseppe Vianelli in Chioggia, about 20 km from Venice (Fig. 1) (Raicich, 2015). Those observations were performed on a regular basis, with interruptions, by educated persons with a scientific background (medicine, natural sciences, physics, engineering and architecture). The technology and methods were far from modern standards; those data can provide valuable information on the sea level variability in the region on various timescales, from daily to interannual.
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