What is the explanation? Refraction hovering the tower into the air?
That would be a mirage. There's no evidence of mirage here. No distortion. No "convergence zone" obscuring or mirroring near water line. There's always standard refraction. Sometimes it's more. Sometimes it's less. Sometimes there's an inversion. There is no inversion evident here. But the geometric calculation is not correct. GE calculation must account for the atmosphere, even if it's just a rule of thumb standard factor. You can always expect the atmosphere to contribute some amount of extra distance, as long as there is not a distorting effect.
Since there is only one which appears to line up, we may as well say that none of them line up.
They definitely don't all line up with the geometric prediction. Only "globebusters" expect them to.
But however they align, they definitely don't align with flat earth prediction, assuming FE is even willing to make a prediction.
All we know is that there is a phenomenon that is occurring which obscures or reveals buildings, and that whatever it is, it does not match the Round Earth calculator.
I can adjust the radius of the earth to estimate a larger sphere. Then it will match. There's a long way to go before it can be declared flat.
There are numerous accounts of bodies being sometimes obscured, and sometimes visible. In other threads we have seen timelapse scenes, in which bodies are obscured or revealed over time. If bodies are obscured or revealed over time, and if this phenomenon changes, then we cannot say that is due to the "curvature" of the earth.
We're looking at this specific set of observations: all on a cold day over a cold sea, with no evidence of sea swells or waves or atmospheric distortion of the sort that you and Rowbotham claim can account for the variances of hidden bottoms of distant things. If you want to make an argument for how those are being exhibited in this set of images, by all means, do so. But don't hand wave to me and tell me that hundreds of feet disappeared in the course of a few hours as the observer coincidentally extended his distance, only to reappear minutes later when he increased his elevation. You can't anecdote your way out of an empirical challenge. The Twisting Torso is disappearing bottom up. If it's not earth curvature, then what is it? Explain it. If there are waves, calculate how high those waves must be. If it's a mirage or squashing of the image like in the Skunk Bay video, where is that evident in the image? It's not there.
The argument that "the delta" on this particular scene is closer to the Round Earth model is, in my opinion, not a strong enough argument, considering that these scenes of obscured bodies change over time, sometimes showing more or much less of bodies, in contradiction to the Round Earth Theory. The sinking ship is already a known variable in our literature, and has been a known phenomenon for hundreds of years.
You have to play by the same rules. If you're going to hold globe earth to a geometric calculation and not allow for atmospheric variances, then you don't get to make excuses for flat earth. The curve of the earth as the reason for ships disappearing over the horizon has been known phenomenon for thousands of years.
Straight geometric calculation is the parameter you and many of these FE videos are demanding of the globe earth. Well, if that's the case, then head-to-head, GE trounces FE in that category. If you want to start applying "magic wands" (as you called refraction), then let's do so systematically and with some foundation, and not just by anecdote.
Pointing at a half-sunken body and proclaiming that the earth is round, and that any error is because of a refraction effect because you must be correct, is quite insufficient in the face of the many observations showing that this phenomenon changes over time. Samuel Birley Rowbotham documents a number of observations where the bodies are sometimes visible or sometime entirely invisible. That alone discounts this effect as a demonstration of curvature.
That's the point of this challenge: to pit your Rowbotham flat earth explanations against the standard atmospheric explanations of round earth. I can get close with an empirical, quantitative approach of a globe earth with standard atmospheric refraction, which isn't a magic wand. I don't see you doing the same thing to explain the discrepancy for what should be visible if the earth were flat.
Straight geometric, no excuses or "magic wands" scoreboard:
Spherical earth, though not hitting the targets on the nose, "wins" every round.