Difference of sea level rising rate from steric and altimeter sea level in the regional Yellow and East China Seas
Abstract
Regional sea level rise is examined in the Yellow and East China Seas (YECS) for the Topex/Poseidon and Jason altimetry period. Coastal tidal data, altimetry and steric sea level data are examined and compared from 1993 to 2015. As usual, temperature and salinity data sampled at regular intervals are available for only a limited number of stations around the Korean Peninsula. The regional sea level rising rate from altimetry compares well with the sea level rising rate from coastal sea level data around Korean Peninsula and Japanese islands around the YECS where data are available. However, differences between the sea level rising rate from altimetry and the steric sea level rising rate are rather large, as expected, since mass effects can not be reflected in the steric sea level rising rate. This is significantly different from the results of the sea level rising trend in the deep East/Japan Sea where thermosteric sea level compares well with the altimetry sea level trend during 9 year period from 1992 to 2001 (Kang et al., 2005). This may suggest that the cause of variability in sea level rising may change with the global trend change in sea level rise with increasing melting effect.The difference of steric sea level and altimetry data for the last 23 years (1993-2015) is expected to be mainly due to mass effects or the addition of mass and dynamic effects. The limited number of data from CTD stations may cause inaccuracies in estimating regional steric sea level in the YECS. The steric sea level rising rate computed from Argo data in the northwestern Pacific (D. Roemmich, 2013), upstream of East China Sea, seems to indicate a negative steric sea level rising pattern during 2006-2013. This suggests that water characteristics affecting the East China Seas through the Kuroshio may contribute to a negative sea level rising trend. More discussion will be given during the meeting.This work is partially supported from research funds from KIOST project (PE99392).
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMOS31B2017K
- Keywords:
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- 4215 Climate and interannual variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERALDE: 4263 Ocean predictability and prediction;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERALDE: 4556 Sea level: variations and mean;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL