New study of tides in the Delaware Bay

A new paper on tides in the Delaware Bay will be published by Geophysical Research Letters. The abstract is reproduced below:

A high-resolution study of tides in the Delaware Bay: Past conditions and future scenarios

Key Points

• Modeled tidal evolution in the Delaware Bay shows strong spatial variability
• Tides respond differently to past and future sea level changes
• Tidal range change can be used to adjust relative sea-level rise estimates

Authors:

George F Hall

David F. Hill

Benjamin Horton

Simon Edward Engelhart

William Richard Peltier

Tides in the Delaware Bay (USA) have been modeled from 7000 years before present (7 ka) to present day and for selected future sea-level rise scenarios (100 years, 300 years). Historic bathymetries were constructed through use of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models and a very high spatial resolution (< 100 m) was used at the shoreline. Future bathymetries were obtained by extrapolating these GIA models and applying an additional eustatic sea-level rise. It was found that tides in the lower bay have remained fairly constant through time but that tides in the upper bay have increased steadily from about 4 ka to present day; a nearly 100% increase in total. The future runs demonstrated spatially complex behavior with tidal-range changes of up to 10%.