Qualitative Analysis of Old and New Sea Level Measuring Techniques and Their Data Consistency

This paper encompasses the analyses of sea level data measured at four tide gauges situated in the city of Split, Croatia. Two old long-term stations comprise float-type instruments in stilling wells, with analog recording on a chart, while two modern stations were installed in 1999 and 2000, calculating sea level height from the measured sea and air pressure. Although analog recording devices with a drum may suffer from inaccuracy in timing and drum rotation speed, clock errors, and vertical pencil position, the largest errors in the data came from the digitizing process, which is subjected to the individual work of a technician. Although, the data collected with pressure systems are supposed to be more homogeneous and accurate, after several years of work, the sensors usually have a drift in time. This problem turned out to be accompanied with lower quality sensors being part of wider automatic measuring systems, whereas the station which has been specially designed for sea level measurements showed no drifts in four years of operating. Therefore, one should be careful in choosing measuring equipment between various manufacturers. In addition, the equipment should be regularly checked since the malfunction in global positioning system (GPS) clock resulted in time drift of sea level data of more than an hour.