Assessing risk associated with sea-level rise and storm surge—Redux

Abstract

Scholarly, peer-reviewed analyses of reasonable sea-level rise and storm surge scenarios are essential to estimate risks to people and property and to identify sensible choices to reduce these risks. Herein we reply to Boretti and Parker, who suggest that sea levels are rising but not currently accelerating. In this respect, they take positions inconsistent with the majority of peer-reviewed semiempirical and model-based sea-level rise projections. Boretti’s comment largely focuses on an analysis of Australian tide gauges. The analysis, text and figures are basically a reproduction of a comment that he has provided previously to a completely different study from the Gold Coast of Australia (Cooper and Lemckert 2012); we are unclear on the relevance of this replicated Australian analysis to our study in the northeast United States. Both Boretti and Parker have drawn conclusions about sealevel rise trends in the United States through ‘visual scanning’ of graphs and by comparing relative sea-level rise trend estimates from years 1999 and 2006. Visual scanning is not a robust method, and it is highly unlikely that any conclusions based on analysis of such a short and particular period of time would pass peer review.