Coastal Restoration Trust of New Zealand

Coastal Dune Ecosystem Reference Database

An updated analysis of long-term sea level change in New Zealand Journal Paper

Author
J. Hannah
Year
2004
Journal / Source
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume
31
Number
L03307
Keywords
Oceanography, Sea level variations, Ocean/Earth/atmosphere interactions, Global Change, Oceans, Tectonophysics, Plate boundary
Summary
The original analysis of long-term sea level change in New Zealand is updated with a new and extended analysis. In this new analysis the original hourly sea level data have been re-examined to remove obvious errors that were still present, new data covering the period 1989–2000 has been added, and the sea level record for Wellington extended by the inclusion of recently discovered data covering the years 1891–1893. These new results indicate that relative sea levels in New Zealand have been rising at an average rate of 1.6 mm/yr over the last 100 years - a figure that is not only within the error bounds of the original determination, but when corrected for glacial-isostatic effects has a high level of coherency with other regional and global sea level rise determinations. There continues to be no evidence of any acceleration in relative sea levels over the record period.