An Update on the Status of Mean Sea Level Rise around the Korean Peninsula

Phil J Watson,Hak-Soo Lim

doi:10.3390/atmos11111153

Abstract

The threat of sea level rise to the heavily populated Korean Peninsula, which contains around 15,000 km of coastline bordering open sea margins, has profound and far reaching implications. This study updates and extends previous detailed studies with the addition of a further 2 years of data to the end of 2019, providing renewed robustness to the identification of emerging threats associated with sea level rise within the warming sea margins around the Korean Peninsula. The study analyzes tide gauge records and satellite altimetry around the Republic of Korea using enhanced time series analysis techniques to detect coastal vertical land motion and current rates of rise in mean sea level to augment planning, design and risk management activities. Despite fluctuations over time at each site, the highest “relative” mean sea level at each of the seven longest tide gauge records occurs in 2019, with weak evidence of an acceleration in the increase in mean sea level around the Republic of Korea. Trends in sea surface height from satellite altimetry across this region note two discreet areas east and west of the Korean Peninsula around 37.5° N (around Ulleungdo Island and in the Gyeonggi Bay region of the Yellow Sea), where rates of rise are well above the global average trend.

Highlights

The Korean Peninsula landmass is approximately 100,000 km2, containing around 15,000 km of coastline bordering the open ocean sea margins of the East Sea (Sea of Japan), East China Sea and Yellow Sea
Velocities around the Republic of Korea in 2019 range between 2.6 ± 1.6 (Mukho) and 4.1 ± 2.1 mm/yr (Incheon). These “geocentric” velocities are in close agreement with the associated SSHA trends from the satellite altimetry (Table 2), noting that the SSHA trends are derived from a much smaller dataset and the linear regression applied does not take account of the dynamic influences embedded within the dataset
The issue of sea level rise is of particular interest around the Korean Peninsula given that the landmass is bounded to the east by the East Sea (Sea of Japan), to the south by the East China Sea and to west by the Yellow Sea

Summary

Introduction

The Korean Peninsula landmass is approximately 100,000 km , containing around 15,000 km of coastline bordering the open ocean sea margins of the East Sea (Sea of Japan), East China Sea and Yellow Sea. The current economic prosperity enjoyed by Korea, having evolved from one of poorest countries in the world prior to 1960 to the world’s 11th largest economy in 2015 [1], relies in part on continuing to successfully manage physical coastal processes and, in particular, threats posed by typhoons to developed coastal margins and associated port infrastructures. The additional threat posed by rising sea levels associated with climate change has loomed large over the course of the 21st century and beyond throughout the low elevation coastal zones around the world [2,3]. The prominence of the climate change issue has placed more emphasis on continued examination and monitoring of available long tide gauge records situated on coastlines along with more recent satellite altimetry data which provide sea surface height products of the open ocean domain from around 1992 onwards. The knowledge gleaned permits a better understanding of the sea level rise phenomena and enables earlier detection of key trends of significance at increasingly finer (regional and local) scales to assist with necessary policy development, planning and adaptation endeavors

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion