To the editor:
Thank you for the excellent article on the tide-rise mural on the Ocean Alliance Paint Factory building on the headland of the Inner Harbor (“Mural at iconic Paint Factory predicts sea level rise,” Oct. 4).
We would have loved to place the mural on Motif No 1.1 (No. 1 having been wiped out in the blizzard of ‘78 (and replaced, hence 1.1), along with all of the buildings on the protected side of the Granite Company pier (by one rogue wave), but it is not high enough. I look forward to seeing Motif No. 1.2 in a few years and Paint Factory 1.1. Taylor Ann Bradford supplied some interesting links, and I would like to add the sources for the data behind the mural. The storm surge data came from the risk finder app of climate central (https://riskfinder.climatecentral.org) specific to Gloucester. The general tide rise data came from a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute study cited on Resiliant Massachusetts site (https://resilientma.org/changes/sea-level-rise). Both sets of data were interpreted with updates gleaned from various more current studies concerning temperature rise predictions and glacier melt rates, otherwise in presenting the curves depicted on the mural I both simplified and took the more severe starting points, but did not in any way exaggerate. Please note that the storm surge area of the mural, the hot red, is valid only if the surge is at the same time as a spring aka king, or peak, tide, but also represents the probability of a five foot surge, which after 2040 is 100%, meaning that there is probability of an even greater surge.
Jim Seavey
Cape Ann Climate Coalition
Gloucester