More than 20 years ago, a paper was published in the journal Geology titled “Large-Scale Reversals in Shoreline Trends along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Coast” (Fenster and Dolan, 1994). This paper purports to show a correspondence between a peak in the record of extratropical storm frequency and magnitude and historical shoreline change reversals toward erosion. Although we agree that large-scale changes in historical storm patterns could affect tempo and mode of shoreline changes, we believe that the methods used by the authors include an arithmetic error that calls into question their specific results regarding a correspondence between changes in extratropical storm patterns and historical shoreline change reversals toward erosion. We have prepared this critique because the Fenster and Dolan (1994) article is still being cited in the scientific literature (e.g., Antolínez et al., 2018; Sankar, Donohue, and Kish, 2018).
Methods used to...
