Brief Note by Kip Hansen — 13 January 2024 — 900 words/5 minutes
If this is the case, why are there so many sites claiming that King Tides are caused by climate change or sea level rise?
Ignorance. That’s the one-word answer. But why are they even talking about King Tides? Pushed by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “the California King Tides Project is a community science program managed by the California Coastal Commission that is focused on highlighting this coastal phenomenon.” Exactly why? “King tides provide a great opportunity to get a glimpse of what our coast may look like as sea-level rises. The water level reached by an extreme high tide today will be the same water level of more frequent moderate tides in the future.” [ source ]
Basically, it is another scare tactic to promote the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise agendas.
Here’s an example from the news yesterday, from Bill McCarthy of the Bay area News Group, published in the Mercury News [may be paywalled]:
“With climate change, king tides could be the new normal ….
King tides are a natural regularly occurring phenomenon as old as time, where–three to four times a year, in conjunction with the moon’s cycles–the tide rushes in further and with more power than normal. They generally occur in the winter, usually January and December. Low-lying areas are flooded, and the water poses a minor nuisance at best, a heavy flooding threat at worst.
In Marin, a popular boardwalk running through a tidal marsh will be covered with water. Narrow beaches become inaccessible. Underpases might flood.
But as climate change pushes sea levels higher, the flooding apparent during king tides could soon become permanent. Current projections estimate that the Bay Area could rise by approximately two feet by 2050, which would put our permanent shoreline at the water level seen during king tides.”
King Tides will always be King Tides by definition. They will always be exceptionally high compared to normal tide levels – that’s why they have a special designation.
More properly, King Tides are perigean spring tides. They don’t just happen in the Spring season. “Often between 6-8 times a year, the new or full moon coincides closely in time with the perigee of the moon — the point when the moon is closest to the Earth. These occurrences are often called ‘perigean spring tides.’ High tides during perigean spring tides can be significantly higher than during other times of the year.”
How much higher?
That depends on the exactly location, the date and the year all taking into account the cycles of the Earth and the Moon.
Here is San Francisco, California, (the major city of “the Bay Area”):
The first thing you will notice is that the tide charts have a “funny” shape – this is called a “Mixed Semidiurnal tide cycle. An area has a mixed semidiurnal tidal cycle if it experiences two high and two low tides of different size every lunar day.”
Oh, what’s the matter? You don’t see a huge dangerous looking King Tide? Correct – the King Tide happened, it was about 1 foot higher than the more normal Mean Higher-High Water (MHHW) for this tide station, which is 5.84 feet above Mean Lower-Low Water.
This graph will give you a better view:
You can see not only the higher highs but the lower lows as well, under the influence of the Moon. Here is last year’s January King Tide, at 7.68 feet:
which was almost a foot higher than this year’s.
And Climate Change? Not related at all.
The only factor that affects King Tides is the mean sea level at the location in question. And for the coast of California, sea level rise isn’t much of a factor.
About four inches in 50 years, right in line with the expected 8-10 inches per century of global sea level rise as measured by tide gauges around the world.
The local mean sea level will control the height and range of the normal tides. As mean sea level in the Bay Area rises, and it will, slowly and inexorably, at about two millimeters a year, the King Tides will advance the same small amount each year.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Journalists working in today’s media seem to be simply incapable of thinking for themselves or of actually doing any fact-checking or back-grounding when it comes to anything that touches on climate, weather, sea levels, storms, hurricanes and all that. They just parrot talking points from the climate crisis agenda.
Not to worry, King Tides are just perigean spring tides. Those locations adversely affected by King Tides are too close to local mean sea level and need to be raised or protected. And that’s all.
Thanks for reading.
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