CORRECTION: This article has been updated throughout to address the central claim that sea level rise to date has not produced catastrophic effects, and to change the verdict from “false” to “misleading.”
Two images of the Statue of Liberty taken 100 years apart are not evidence that sea level rise is insignificant, as some social media users are suggesting. The documented sea level rise of roughly one foot over the last century would not be discernible in a simple comparison of the photos, experts told Reuters, nor would the catastrophic potential of past and future sea level rise.
Users sharing the images imply that the lack of visible difference in the tranquil postcard views of the statue in New York Harbor means that sea level rise to date has been negligible and without impact. However, sea level rise to date has already been shown to have contributed to catastrophic damage done by storms and flooding, and accelerating sea level rise projected over the next century is expected to worsen the problem.
The social media posts show one black and white photograph of the statue dated 1920 above another image dated 2020. On the face of it, there appears to be no difference in the water level in the shots.
The text on the meme reads: “This is what catastrophic sea-level rise actually looks like.”
One account that shared the photographs on Nov. 2 said: “Look at the huge change in the last 100 years…oh…hang on…” (here). Another user who shared the meme said: “The big lie of ‘global warming’ .... [sic]” (here).
Examples of the meme on social media are viewable (here), (here), (here), (here).
The black and white image was taken in 1917 by photographer W. L. Drummond (here). Reuters did not find a source for the second photograph, which users online say was taken in 2020.
Experts told Reuters that two side-by-side photos did not in themselves prove anything about how much sea level has risen or the impact of the change.
SMALL BUT SIGNIFICANT
Tide gauge measurements produced by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) at The Battery, New York, near the Statue of Liberty, from 1855 to today, show a trend of an approximate 2.9mm rise in sea level every year (here).
“This amount is small compared to the 5-foot range between low and high tide, so you would need carefully timed photos (at the same point in the tidal cycle, on a day when the tides were of comparable scale) for there to be a visual difference,” Robert Kopp, Professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Director of the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub at Rutgers University, told Reuters via email.
“No one is calling the sea level rise experienced so far catastrophic, but global sea level rise has accelerated since about 1970 and will continue to accelerate until global temperatures are stabilized. Even under a very optimistic emissions scenario, we expect more sea level rise in the next century than the last one,” he added.
“If the point is that changes have been small, that’s true relative to the height of the Statue but meaningless because much of the City lies close to sea level. In several areas, flooding has now become a regular occurrence due to the high tide alone, not to mention storm surges,” Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, told Reuters.
Dr Philip Orton, Associate Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), agreed that it was misleading to compare two randomly timed photographs to gauge sea-level rise.
"The typical range of water levels in New York harbor through the year is about 2 meters (or using Imperial units, 6 feet), so one can compare a picture from high tide in 1920 to one at low tide in 2020 and it can be very misleading. Sea level rise is computed using monthly or annual averages to avoid this confusion,” he said (here).
“The (relative) sea level rise (SLR) in NYC (Battery tide gauge) is about 1.1 inches in every decade, or about a foot in a century,” Dr Klaus Hans Jacob, Special Research Scientist in Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Colombia Climate School, told Reuters (here).
“A photographic comparison between 2020 and 1920 is meaningless since the daily tides in New York harbor are several feet every day, and therefore are larger than the SLR for the last 100 years,” he added.
Reuters previously addressed a similar misleading claim based on two side-by-side images of Fort Denison, Sydney, Australia (here).
ALREADY CAUSING DAMAGE
A study published by Orton, Kopp and colleagues in May 2021 found that a significant portion of the $60 billion in damage done by Hurricane Sandy - which hit the East Coast of the U.S. in October 2012 was attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change (here).
Simulating the storm’s impact with a variety of sea level rise estimates, the authors calculated that approximately $8.1 billion “of Sandy’s damages are attributable to climate-mediated anthropogenic sea level rise, as is extension of the flood area to affect 71 (40–131) thousand additional people.”
Liberty Island itself has been damaged by rising sea levels and flooding in the past, and is at risk of future flooding, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report describes (on PDF page 17-19) Liberty Island having been “three-quarters submerged” during Hurricane Sandy, with $77 million in damage resulting (here), (here), (here).
The UCS report emphasizes that Sandy’s “storm surge” was unprecedented in its height, and that surge, amplified by sea level rise, directly contributed to the scale of coastal flooding and damage done by the storm.
Sea level projections produced in 2019 by the NPCC for the coming decades are viewable (here), (here). The analyses forecast accelerating sea level rise in the region, with a possible rise of about 2 feet to as much as 9 feet by 2100.
VERDICT
Misleading. Two side-by-side images of the Statue of Liberty are not evidence of the degree of sea level rise, or that sea level rise to date has had no catastrophic impact.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.