evidence: A previous version of the coastal sea-level product was recently validated against tide gauge observations in Ref. 17, and we defer to that study for full details. Here, we briefly summarize the results of such validation. To ensure a proper validation, tide gauge records were adjusted for vertical land motions using Global Positioning System (GPS) vertical velocities. We found an average correlation of 0.5 between monthly tide gauge records and point-level altimetry data, but the correlation increases to 0.78 when averaging the altimetry data along and across tracks for data that fall within a small distance from each tide gauge. The increase in correlation achieved by averaging occurs because it reduces both sampling uncertainty (monthly means are based on more than 3 values) and the influence of small-scale variability. Linear trends were found to be in good statistical agreement at 64% of the tide gauge stations.