Tides and Sea-Levels Around Puerto Rico: Assessing Regional Changes Over the Past Two Decades Using Satellite Altimetry
Abstract
Relative sea level change based on long-term tide gauge records in and around Puerto Rico indicated that sea level has risen about 10 cm since 1960, which extrapolates to about 55 cm for the next three decades. Under anthropogenic sea level rise, this translates into dire consequence including intensified hurricane-induced storm surges can inundate much further inland, leading to more destroyed property in coastal zones. This problem exacerbates with the fact that these observations has been traditionally recorded from in-situ tide gauge data at distant locations, and with inadequate knowledge on vertical land motion and coastal tides, with a much higher spatial scale, impact the actual extent and height of the sea level inundation. Here, our contribution is to assess coastal tidal signals observed or predicted from in-situ tide gauges and/or multi-mission radar altimeter derived barotropic ocean tide models, as well as to measure relative sea level rise over the last few decades. Our study regions include the coastal four cardinal points of Puerto Rico, and surrounding regions in the Caribbean Sea.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMOS31D1779O
- Keywords:
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- 1641 Sea level change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4217 Coastal processes;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL;
- 4262 Ocean observing systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL;
- 4556 Sea level: variations and mean;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL