Maybe not the average, but the high tides are higher, and the lows are lower and much more frequently. We never had such a large range on a regular basis before.
I do agree that a properly managed gate system would be beneficial and would be a much better investment of the taxpayer's money than raising individual houses. But that doesn't buy individual votes.
Avenger,
They have been studying the change in tides, and have found the same to be occurring in New Jersey. The new Old Inlet clearly doesn't have anything to do with waterlevels in NJ. What they believe to be the cause is that the Gulf Stream has been slowing down. When it was running faster, it would suck some of the water out of the New York Bite with it, but as it's slowing more of that water is remaining here.
I believe this slowing of the Gulf Stream is also responsible for why we do not see the large eddies spinning off the GS and coming into the NY bite anymore, and instead now, we typically only see weakly connected filaments of GS water. The water on the edge of the continental shelf is warmer than ever, but it is not always the clean blue GS water, and instead, more turbid shelf water. Chlorophyll charts are more important then ever now to find that clean GS water.
I think the changing ocean currents also helps explain some of the wildly changing weather patterns we're seeing. There was a movie years ago, Day After Tomorrow, which discussed this, but in a Hollywood dramatized manner. While it was on a rediculously rapid scale in the movie, it was based on some scientific facts I had learned out in an oceanography class many years ago. Weather is largely controlled by ocean currents. When the currents change so does the weather. In this case, it's becoming unstable. Superstorms, Polar Vortexes, More tropical storms than ever in recorded history, Snow in Las Vegas, drought in other areas. . .
The earth is warming. That will cause ice caps to melt and flood the dry areas. All that water will then cool the climate and start the next ice age. That's the cycle that has played out multiple times in the earth's long history, long before humans existed.
