The NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services has been measuring sea level for over 150 years, with tide stations of the National Water Level Observation Network operating on all U.S. coasts. Changes in mean sea level, either a sea level rise or sea level fall, have been computed at 128 long-term water level stations using a minimum span of 30 years of observations at each location. These measurements have been averaged by month to remove the effect of higher frequency phenomena (e.g., storm surge) in order to compute an accurate linear sea level trend. The trend analysis has also been extended to 240 global tide stations using data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL).

The mean sea level trends measured by tide gauges that are presented on this website are local relative mean sea level trends, as opposed to the global sea level trend. Tide gauge measurements are made with respect to a local fixed reference level on land; therefore, if there is some long-term vertical land motion occurring at that location, the relative mean sea level trend measured there is a combination of the global sea level rate and the local vertical land motion. The global sea level trend has been recorded by satellite altimeters since 1992, and the latest calculation of the trend can be obtained from NOAA's Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry, along with maps of the regional variation in the trend. The University of Colorado's Sea Level Research Group compares global sea level rates calculated by different research organizations and provides detailed explanations about the issues involved.