evidence: Sometimes the observed records are extended by sea-level projections, and the acceleration is defined as a rate of SLR significantly larger than observed, which only allows for finding an acceleration in the future (Haigh et al., 2014; Dangendorf et al., 2014a). Some studies compared the rates of linear SLR over two different periods (Calafat and Chambers, 2013; Steffelbauer et al., 2022), and others fitted a second-degree polynomial to the data (Haigh et al., 2014; Dangendorf et al., 2019). In general, the sea-level variability due to atmospheric forcing is estimated first by linearly detrending the time series. After that, the variability is removed from the sea-level data before estimating the trend and acceleration. Many previous studies of SLR in the North Sea did not find evidence of a significant SLR acceleration (Calafat and Chambers, 2013; Wahl et al., 2013; Haigh et al., 2014; Ezer et al., 2016), whereas Steffelbauer et al. (2022) did. To detect the acceleration of SLR in the North Sea, Steffelbauer et al. (2022) analysed the 100-year time series (1919–2018) of eight tide gauges and found a common breakpoint in the early 1990s.