Reply to: Houston, J.R., 2016. Discussion of: Boon, J.D. and Mitchell, M., 2015. Nonlinear Change in Sea Level Observed at North American Tide Stations, Journal of Coastal Research, 31(6), 1295–1305. Journal of Coastal Research, 32(4), 983–987. Available to Purchase

Objections raised by J.R. Houston to relative mean sea level (RMSL) projections made by Boon and Mitchell (2015) stem from his previous work published with the late professor R.G. Dean. Houston and Dean (2011) stated that “Without sea-level acceleration, the 20th-century sea-level trend of 1.7 mm/y would produce a rise of only approximately 0.15 m from 2010 to 2100; therefore, sea-level acceleration is a critical component of projected sea-level rise” (p. 409). After applying quadratic regression to records from 57 tide stations across the United States and its territories, these authors cast considerable doubt on that same component by finding, on average, a slight deceleration. Citing work by Douglas (1992), they computed an error about their group average from the 57 residuals, rather than using the error estimates of the individual station records. Six stations that showed more than a slight acceleration were termed outliers on the basis of...