Understanding the Concept of Sea Level in Relation to Mountain Height

[Julian Solos]

What is "Sea Level"?

What is "Sea Level" as used in describing the height of a mountain?

 

[nautica]

Sea level is just what it says. It has arbritrairily been defined as zero, which is the level of the sea.

Nautica

 

[Julian Solos]

Originally posted by nautica
Sea level is just what it says. It has arbritrairily been defined as zero, which is the level of the sea.

Nautica

Is it local or the average of the sea levels at various locations on the Earth.

If it's local, the sea level of which sea was used as a reference point for the following description?

"It is well known that the HIGHEST mountain on Earth is Mt. Everest on the Nepal-Tibet border in the Himalayas. It stands 8,848 m (29,028 ft) above sea level." [US Geological Survey, Pasadena.]

 

[selfAdjoint]

The "sea level" used is the level of the world ocean (you can see that all the oceans and many of the seas are physically linked, right?). Water seeks its own level so the sea level, at least relative to the underlying geoid (shape of the Earth's surface) is well defined. It is first defined by geodesy, using pendulums and stellar obsrvations to pin down the geoid (I suppose nowadays they use GPS). Then from this base value the benchmarks of altitude above or below sea level are established by surveying.

 

[Monique]

Um, so how about tides??

 

[LURCH]

It's averaged out for tides.

But the quote in question only speaks of Mt Everest being the "highest" mountain, and then gives its altitude above sea level. Of course, this does not take into account that the foot of Everest is also well above sea level. So although Everest's peak is the highest above sea level, it is not the tallest mountain if you measure from the foot of the mountain to the peak.

Everest is about 29,000ft from base to peak, while Mauna Kea, in Hawaai, stands nmore than 33,000ft from the seafloor. And although Chimbarazo, in the Andes, is only about 20,000ft above sea level, its peak is farthest from the Earth's center (because it's closer to the equator).

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by LURCH
It's averaged out for tides.

Ok, so you are standing on top of Everest, how do you know how far above sealevel it is? How do you know how far the sea is above sealevel, anyway?

For instance the Mediteranian sea, it is in connection with the Atlantic ocean through a small opening: the Street of Gibraltar.. does it mean that the Mediteranian sea is always at sealevel? (minimal effect of tides?)

But then I observed that Lake Erie in the US seemed to even have tides..

 

[nautica]

Sea Level is set to zero. It does not matter what tides do, the sea level measure does not change. I am sure if you wanted to take the time to do the calculations you could find the height of the tides due to the moon and the sun at any given time and find the exact height of the sea. Or you could just use a gps and find it out.

Nautica

 

[selfAdjoint]

Originally posted by Monique
Ok, so you are standing on top of Everest, how do you know how far above sealevel it is? How do you know how far the sea is above sealevel, anyway?

For instance the Mediteranian sea, it is in connection with the Atlantic ocean through a small opening: the Street of Gibraltar.. does it mean that the Mediteranian sea is always at sealevel? (minimal effect of tides?)

But then I observed that Lake Erie in the US seemed to even have tides..

Lake ERIE tides? That's a new one on me. AFAIK the much larger Lake Michigan doesn't have tides, and I've been around it and on it a bit. The great lakes are not at sea level, because water flows down from them (over Niagra for instance) to the world ocean. The Saint Laurence Seaway which leads from an arm of the Atlantic to the lakes has locks in it to raise the ships to the higher level.

You know the height of Everest above sea level because it has been surveyed. You don't have to climb it to survey it. You just have to know its distance and its angular height above a known benchmark and then trigonometry gives you the answer. The British did a heroic scale surveying job in the Himalayas in the 19th century. Of course now with radar ranging and such it's much easier, and more accurate.

 

[Nereid]

The geoid

SelfAdjoint mentioned the geoid, and the modern use of GPS in its determination.

It won't come as a surprise to any reader, I'm sure, that determining the geoid is far from straight-forward, if you want cm precision.

This page - from the GRACE website - gives an indication of what's now being done with such an accurate geoid. The whole site is really fun to explore.
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gravity/oceanographic_sciences.html

[Edit: posted wrong link! corrected]

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by nautica
Sea Level is set to zero. It does not matter what tides do, the sea level measure does not change. I am sure if you wanted to take the time to do the calculations you could find the height of the tides due to the moon and the sun at any given time and find the exact height of the sea. Or you could just use a gps and find it out.

Nautica

Yeah, so I went to the beach today (I did).. say I wanted to measure how much the water was above set sealevel, or below, because of tides.. how would I do that? I mean.. what is the reference??

Actually the water must've been really high last night, since the sand was compressed all the way up to the dunes..

 

[Jeebus]

I have researched a bit and it is said that sea-levels can be measured by depth gauges at the end of the pier to satellite altimetry. Even the satellite, Topex-Poseidon can measure sea-levels. Now, if you wanted to meausure the sea-levels by tides I think the reference would be, I guess, tide gauges.

 

[Monique]

Well, I really don't get it how can you measure that the water along the coast of Holland is of the same level, as the water along the coast of Australia.. halfway around the world?

Is there somewhere on the world a beacon which says: this is sealevel? Like there is the Greenwhich timezone, which says: this is t0?

 

[LURCH]

Originally posted by Monique
Yeah, so I went to the beach today (I did).. say I wanted to measure how much the water was above set sealevel, or below, because of tides.. how would I do that? I mean.. what is the reference??

That's what I mean by "averaged"; find however high the water gets at high tide, and however low it gets at low tide, determine the average between these two, and that is Mean Sea Level.

As for tides in the Great Lakes, yes we have them, but they're only about 2 inches different. This channge twice daily is almost impossible to detect without intruments and long-term records, as the change in water level daily (due to meteoralogical effects) is much greater. A few years ago here on Lake Huron, we had a seiche, and that was pretty freaky! The tide just suddenly went out many yards. A lot of people who live on the shoreline awoke to find their property doubled or tripled in size. Personally, I would have been terrified and gotten my familly out of the house and up to high ground. An out-surge like that is usually a precurser to a tidal wave. Fortunately, there was no large wave, levels just returned to normal over the course of the day.

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by LURCH
That's what I mean by "averaged"; find however high the water gets at high tide, and however low it gets at low tide, determine the average between these two, and that is Mean Sea Level.

Well, that makes sense :)

 

[Bystander]

http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/final_year_thesis/p_epstein/monitr_t.htm

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Monique
Well, I really don't get it how can you measure that the water along the coast of Holland is of the same level, as the water along the coast of Australia.. halfway around the world?

Is there somewhere on the world a beacon which says: this is sealevel? Like there is the Greenwhich timezone, which says: this is t0?

No, sea level is a local thing and you build your 3d model based on local sea levels.

To find your local sea level, take some random pier in Holland, make marks on the pilings every 15 minutes for a couple of years, and take the average. That's mean sea level for that pier in holland. Then do the same thing in Australia and in a couple of hundred other places and you can build a model.

If your difficulty isn't with figuring it out but relating it to sea level somewhere else, its just a definition. Its arbitrary. No, measuring sea level in this in Holland an Australia does not actually tell you how far the two points are from the center of the Earth or really locate them in 3d space.

And as said before, building the model used to be a difficult thing, but with GPS and radar, now you can relate all those points quite precisely and build a real 3d model from it. However, even before you could build a real 3d model of the world, you could still define sea level in Holland and Australia to be the same thing. It is a rather arbitrary (though logical) choices for a datum.

 

[Monique]

yep

So how complicated would they have made the calibrations? Say for Holland and Australia.. would the position of the moon be significantly different averaged for the same few days at the same locations?

 

[Bystander]

Average hourly readings over one lunar cycle (18.6 years), and you've got one sea level datum, including storms; average over several cycles and you get a mean sea level.

 

[Monique]

How about solar influences? If there were no moon, would we have solar tides? Theoretically how large could those be? How large are lunar tides anyway?

I was planning to look up a website which lists the tides, it must exist I am sure.. at the north of the Netherlands there are a bunch of islands a few miles out from land.. at low tide you can walk over to the island, which is pretty cool :)

 

[Julian Solos]

Originally posted by Bystander
http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/final_year_thesis/p_epstein/monitr_t.htm

I've browsed through that. Thank you.


I've read this one too:

http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/puscience/


And I'm still CLUELESS about "sea level."


Is it a conceptual quantity or is it an actual physical measurable quantity?

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Monique
How about solar influences? If there were no moon, would we have solar tides? Theoretically how large could those be? How large are lunar tides anyway?

Yes, we do have solar tides. Really, gravitational interaction of any two bodies creates tidal forces in both.HERE is a decent site on ocean tides.

Just a clarificaton of something I'm not sure was clear in your previous post - what tides in Australia and Holland are doing right now is not important to compare. Onlly the average is what determines sea level.

So how complicated would they have made the calibrations? Say for Holland and Australia.. would the position of the moon be significantly different averaged for the same few days at the same locations?

Yes, the position of the moon has a significant effect on the tides. To get a really good sea level average you need a pretty long time period (a year or so).

Calculations are extremely precise and have been for some time, but only on a local level. There are books and software and calculations for figuring out the tides - as a matter of fact, that was one of my tasks in the Navy (I was in navigation). Anyway, the reason you don't often compare tides in different places is there really isn't much relevance to it. Similarly, how far sea level is from the center of the Earth in Holland is vs Australia isn't often very important either: its only really important if your position fixing is truly 3D such as with GPS (and not just 2d with surface contours such as on a map).

Back to the sea level and mountain issue for a quick sec though: we forgot about one of the easiest ways to find altitude relative to sea level. A barometric altimeter. Even with variable weather, you can find altitude to within a hundred feet or so with it. And since air pressure is determined by gravity, sea level pressure is the same everywhere.

 

[ray b]

they add togetter or subtract depending on positions
moon+ sun = spring tides the highest and lowest tides each cycle at full or new moon
sun - moon = neap tides the lowest difference at 1/2 moon times

survey data is very old for mean sea levels we use 1929 data in south fla

GPS is NOT accurate enuff for height data as it has the biggest error rate
about 10x the error rate of the x+y location data for the z height axis

lake levels are more wind driven on the short term and change do to input and outflow levels
over longer times

 

[Monique]

Makes me wonder about being 1.5 meters below sealevel.. what is the average height difference between tides? Depends on the location?

 

[Nereid]

Makes me wonder about being 1.5 meters below sealevel.. what is the average height difference between tides? Depends on the location?

~0 to >10m, and yes.

 

[Michael D. Sewell]

Is there somewhere on the world a beacon which says: this is sealevel? Like there is the Greenwhich timezone, which says: this is t0?

Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Check with a local surveyor. He or she can tell you where to find a datum point or bench mark.

As mentioned before, GPS is not accurate enough to measure height.

Also, Don't forget about atmospheric tides when using your barometer.

-Mike

 

[Andre]

Yes how about a sea level change of 750 meters?

http://www.cuba.cu/ciencia/citma/ama/museo/exmari.htm
(not an attempt to steal the thread)

Monique,

some usefull links for Dutch sea level history:

http://www.ncg.knaw.nl/SubBZ/BeginSubBZ.htm
http://hanserren.cwhoutwijk.nl/co2/denhelder.html

the webpage of an acquintance who has an interesting hobby.

Bottom line is that we have no good idea about what's happening and there is no need for alarm. So this is not the reason why I changed my -1,5 meter elevation residence in Holland for an appartment at +975 meters in Germany (Still a lot of snow here)

 

[Nereid]

Both GRACE and GOCE (the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Mission) will improve understanding of the geoid (to +/- 1cm) and ocean circulation.

 

[russ_watters]

GPS is NOT accurate enuff for height data as it has the biggest error rate
about 10x the error rate of the x+y location data for the z height axis

Standard commercial GPS is less accurate for the vertical axis, but its gotten a ton better with DGPS & WAAS.

Surveyors use equipment optomized for stationary measurments though - and its a good order of magnitude more accurate than typical systems.

edit: http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e/geodesy_e/gps-13_e.html is a good site listing several types of systems and their accuracies. For surveyors its 1-30cm in 2d and 1.6 to 45cm 3d.

 

[Michael D. Sewell]

On the ball

Russ,
The last I knew, the best GPS systems were only accurate to within 1 meter.
Thanks for the update, and thanks for the link.
-Mike