Extracting tidal frequencies using multivariate harmonic analysis of sea level height time series

The impact of climatic variability in atmospheric conditions on coastal environments accompanies adjustments in both the frequency and intensity of coastal storm surge events. The top winter season daily maximum sea level height events at 20 tidal stations around South Korea were examined to assess such impact of winter extratropical cyclone variability. As the investigation focusses on the most extreme sea level events, the impact of climate change is found to be invisible. It is revealed that the measures of extreme sea level events—frequency and intensity—do not correlate with the local sea surface temperature anomalies. Meanwhile, the frequency of winter extreme events exhibits a clear association with the concurrent climatic indices. It was determined that the annual frequency of the all-time top 5% winter daily maximum sea level events significantly and positively correlates with the NINO3.4 and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) indices at the majority of the 20 tidal stations. Hence, this indicates an increase in extreme event frequency and intensity, despite localized temperature cooling. This contradicts the expectation of increases in local extreme sea level events due to thermal expansion and global climate change. During El Nino, it is suggested that northward shifts of winter storm tracks associated with El Nino occur, disturbing the sea level around Korea more often. The current dominance of interannual storm track shifts, due to climate variability, over the impact of slow rise on the winter extreme sea level events, implies that coastal extreme sea level events will change through changes in the mechanical drivers rather than thermal expansion. The major storm tracks are predicted to continue shifting northward. The winter extreme sea level events in the midlatitude coastal region might not go through a monotonic change. They are expected to occur more often and more intensively in the near future, but might not continue doing so when northward shifting storm tracks move away from the marginal seas around Korea, as is predicted by the end of the century.

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Validation of sea surface heights from satellite altimetry along the Indian coast

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4862 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Milaa Murshan ◽

Balaji Devaraju ◽

Nagarajan Balasubramanian ◽

Onkar Dikshit

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Sea Level ◽

Satellite Altimetry ◽

Tide Gauge ◽

Atmospheric Correction ◽

North Indian Ocean ◽

Sea Surface ◽

Indian Coast ◽

Vertical Land Motion ◽

And Performance

Satellite altimetry provides measurements of sea surface height of centimeter-level accuracy over open oceans. However, its accuracy reduces when approaching the coastal areas and over land regions. Despite this downside, altimetric measurements are still applied successfully in these areas through altimeter retracking processes. This study aims to calibrate and validate retracted sea level data of Envisat, ERS-2, Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1, 2, SARAL/AltiKa, Cryosat-2 altimetric missions near the Indian coastline. We assessed the reliability, quality, and performance of these missions by comparing eight tide gauge (TG) stations along the Indian coast. These are Okha, Mumbai, Karwar, and Cochin stations in the Arabian Sea, and Nagapattinam, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, and Paradip in the Bay of Bengal. To compare the satellite altimetry and TG sea level time series, both datasets are transformed to the same reference datum. Before the calculation of the bias between the altimetry and TG sea level time series, TG data are corrected for Inverted Barometer (IB) and Dynamic Atmospheric Correction (DAC). Since there are no prior VLM measurements in our study area, VLM is calculated from TG records using the same procedure as in the Technical Report NOS organization CO-OPS 065.&#160;Keywords&#8212; Tide gauge, Sea level, North Indian ocean, satellite altimetry, Vertical land motion

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Estimating contribution of high-frequency sea-level oscillations to the extreme sea levels in the Adriatic Sea

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4602 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Krešimir Ruić ◽

Jadranka Šepić ◽

Maja Karlović ◽

Iva Međugorac

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Sea Level ◽

High Frequency ◽

Adriatic Sea ◽

Tide Gauge ◽

Data Series ◽

Sea Levels ◽

Short Period ◽

Extreme Sea Levels ◽

Sea Level Oscillations

Extreme sea levels are known to hit the Adriatic Sea and to occasionally cause floods that produce severe material damage. Whereas the contribution of longer-period (T > 2 h) sea-level oscillations to the phenomena has been well researched, the contribution of the shorter period (T <&#160;2 h) oscillations is yet to be determined. With this aim, data of 1-min sampling resolution were collected for 20 tide gauges, 10 located at the Italian (north and west) and 10 at the Croatian (east) Adriatic coast. Analyses were done on time series of 3 to 15 years length, with the latest data coming from 2020, and with longer data series available for the Croatian coast. Sea level data were thoroughly checked, and spurious data were removed.&#160;For each station, extreme sea levels were defined as events during which sea level surpasses its 99.9 percentile value. The contribution of short-period oscillations to extremes was then estimated from corresponding high-frequency (T < 2 h) series. Additionally, for four Croatian tide gauge stations (Rovinj, Bakar, Split, and Dubrovnik), for period of 1956-2004, extreme sea levels were also determined from the hourly sea level time series, with the contribution of short-period oscillations visually estimated from the original tide gauge charts.&#160;&#160;Spatial and temporal distribution of contribution of short-period sea-level oscillations to the extreme sea level in the Adriatic were estimated. It was shown that short-period sea-level oscillation can significantly contribute to the overall extremes and should be considered when estimating flooding levels.&#160;

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Analysis of the eastern Adriatic sea-level extremes

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5676 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Marija Pervan ◽

Jadranka Šepić

Keyword(s):

Sea Level ◽

Adriatic Sea ◽

Hot Spot ◽

Storm Surges ◽

Low Pressure ◽

Long Period ◽

Short Period ◽

Sea Level Oscillations ◽

Low Pass ◽

Level Height

The Adriatic Sea is known to be under a high flooding risk due to both storm surges and meteorological tsunamis, with the latter defined as short-period sea-level oscillations alike to tsunamis but generated by atmospheric processes. In June 2017, a tide-gauge station with a 1-min sampling resolution has been installed at Stari Grad (middle Adriatic Sea), the well-known meteotsunami hot-spot, which is, also, often hit by storm surges.&#160;Three years of corresponding sea-level measurements were analyzed, and 10 strongest episodes of each of the following extreme types were extracted from the residual series: (1) positive long-period (T > 210 min) extremes; (2) negative long-period (T > 210 min) extremes; (3) short-period (T < 210) extremes. Long-period extremes were defined as situations during which sea level surpasses (is lower than) 99.7 (i.e. 2) percentile of sea level height, and short-period extremes as situations during which variance of short-period sea-level oscillations is higher than 99.4 percentile of total variance[J1]&#160; of short-period series. A strong seasonal signal was detected for all extremes, with most of the positive long-period extremes appearing during November to February, and most of the negative long-period extremes during January to February. As for the short-period extremes, these appear evenly throughout the year, but strongest events seem to appear during May to July.All events were associated to characteristic atmospheric situations, using both local measurements of the atmospheric variables, and ERA5 Reanalysis dataset. It was shown that positive low-pass extremes commonly appear during presence of low pressure over the Adriatic associated with strong SE winds (&#8220;sirocco&#8221;), and negative low-pass extremes are associated to the high atmospheric pressure over the area associated with either strong NE winds (&#8220;bora&#8221;), or no winds at all. On the other hand, high-pass sea level extremes are noticed during two distinct types of atmospheric situations corresponding to both &#8220;bad&#8221; (low pressure, strong SE wind) and &#8220;nice&#8221; (high pressure, no wind) weather.It is particularly interesting that short-period extremes, of which strongest are meteotsunamis, are occasionally coincident with positive long-period extremes contributing with up to 50 percent to total sea level height &#8211; thus implying existence of a double danger phenomena (meteotsunami + storm surge).&#160;

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Performance Assessment of GNSS-R Polarimetric Observations for Sea Level Monitoring

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12709 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Mahmoud Rajabi ◽

Mstafa Hoseini ◽

Hossein Nahavandchi ◽

Maximilian Semmling ◽

Markus Ramatschi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Circular Polarization ◽

Sea Level ◽

Tide Gauge ◽

Satellite System ◽

Sea Surface ◽

Analysis Tool ◽

Lower Accuracy ◽

Coastal Sea ◽

Global Navigation Satellite

Determination and monitoring of the mean sea level especially in the coastal areas are essential, environmentally, and as a vertical datum. Ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) is an innovative way which is becoming a reliable alternative for coastal sea-level altimetry. Comparing to traditional tide gauges, GNSS-R can offer different parameters of sea surface, one of which is the sea level. The measurements derived from this technique can cover wider areas of the sea surface in contrast to point-wise observations of a tide gauge. &#160;We use long-term ground-based GNSS-R observations to estimate sea level. The dataset includes one-year data from January to December 2016. The data was collected by a coastal GNSS-R experiment at the Onsala space observatory in Sweden. The experiment utilizes three antennas with different polarization designs and orientations. The setup has one up-looking, and two sea-looking antennas at about 3 meters above the sea surface level. The up-looking antenna is Right-Handed Circular Polarization (RHCP). The sea-looking antennas with RHCP and Left-Handed Circular Polarization (LHCP) are used for capturing sea reflected Global Positioning System (GPS) signals. A dedicated reflectometry receiver (GORS type) provides In-phase and Quadrature (I/Q) correlation sums for each antenna based on the captured interferometric signal. The generated time series of I/Q samples from different satellites are analyzed using the Least Squares Harmonic Estimation (LSHE) method. This method is a multivariate analysis tool which can flexibly retrieve the frequencies of a time series regardless of possible gaps or unevenly spaced sampling. The interferometric frequency, which is related to the reflection geometry and sea level, is obtained by LSHE with a temporal resolution of 15&#160;minutes. The sea level is calculated based on this frequency in six modes from the three antennas in GPS L1 and L2 signals.Our investigation shows that the sea-looking antennas perform better compared to the up-looking antenna. The highest accuracy is achieved using the sea-looking LHCP antenna and GPS L1 signal. The annual Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 15-min GNSS-R water level time series compared to tide gauge observations is 3.7 (L1) and 5.2 (L2) cm for sea-looking LHCP, 5.8 (L1) and 9.1 (L2) cm for sea-looking RHCP, 6.2 (L1) and 8.5 (L2) cm for up-looking RHCP. It is worth noting that the GPS IIR block satellites show lower accuracy due to the lack of L2C code. Therefore, the L2 observations from this block are eliminated.

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Characterizing and minimizing the effects of noise in tide gauge time series: relative and geocentric sea level rise around Australia

Geophysical Journal International ◽

10.1093/gji/ggt131 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 194 (2) ◽

pp. 719-736 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Reed J. Burgette ◽

Christopher S. Watson ◽

John A. Church ◽

Neil J. White ◽

Paul Tregoning ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Sea Level Rise ◽

Sea Level ◽

Tide Gauge

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Measuring Sound at a Cold-Water Coral Reef to Assess the Impact of COVID-19 on Noise Pollution

Frontiers in Marine Science ◽

10.3389/fmars.2021.674702 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Laurence H. De Clippele ◽

Denise Risch

Keyword(s):

Coral Reef ◽

Coral Reefs ◽

Sea Level ◽

Cold Water ◽

Noise Pollution ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Noise Levels ◽

Level Height ◽

Water Coral

This study compares the noise levels at the cold-water coral Tisler reef, before and after the closure of the border between Norway and Sweden, which occurred as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tisler reef is a marine protected area located under a ferry “highway” that connects Norway and Sweden. Cold-water coral reefs are recognised as being important hotspots of both biodiversity and biomass, they function as breeding and nursing grounds for commercially important fish and are essential in providing ecosystem functions. Whilst studies have shown that fishery, ocean warming, and acidification threaten them, the effects of noise pollution on cold-water coral reefs remains unstudied. To study the severity of noise pollution at the Tisler reef, a long-term acoustic recorder was deployed from 29 January 2020 until 26 May 2020. From 15 March COVID-19 lockdown measures stopped passenger vessel traffic between Norway and Sweden. This study found that the overall noise levels were significantly lower after border closure, due to reduced ferry traffic, wind speeds, and sea level height. When comparing the median hourly noise levels of before vs. after border closure, this study measured a significant reduction in the 63–125 Hz 1/3 octave band noise levels of 8.94 ± 0.88 (MAD) dB during the day (07:00:00–19:59:59) and 1.94 ± 0.11 (MAD) dB during the night (20:00:00–06:59:59). Since there was no ferry traffic during the night, the drop in noise levels at night was likely driven by seasonal changes, i.e., the reduction in wind speed and sea level height when transitioning from winter to spring. Taking into account this seasonal effect, it can be deduced that the COVID-19 border closure reduced the noise levels in the 63–125 Hz 1/3 octave bands at the Tisler reef by 7.0 ± 0.99 (MAD) dB during the day. While the contribution of, and changes in biological, weather-related and geophysical sound sources remain to be assessed in more detail, understanding the extent of anthropogenic noise pollution at the Tisler cold-water coral reef is critical to guide effective management to ensure the long-term health and conservation of its ecosystem functions.

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