Abstract
Spanning over a century, a traditional way to monitor sea level variability by tide gauges is – in combination with modern observational techniques like satellite altimetry – an inevitable ingredient in sea level studies over the climate scales and in coastal seas. The development of the instrumentation, remote data acquisition, processing and archiving in last decades allowed for extending the applications towards a variety of users and coastal hazard managers. The Mediterranean and Black seas are an example for such a transition – while having a long tradition for sea level observations with several records spanning over a century, the number of modern tide gauge stations are growing rapidly, with data available both in real-time and as a research product at different time resolutions. As no comprehensive survey of the tide gauge networks has been carried out recently in these basins, the aim of this paper is to map the existing coastal sea level monitoring infrastructures and the respective data availability. The survey encompasses description of major monitoring networks in the Mediterranean and Black seas and their characteristics, including the type of sea level sensors, measuring resolutions, data availability and existence of ancillary measurements, altogether collecting information about 236 presently operational tide gauge stations. The availability of the Mediterranean and Black seas sea level data in the global and European sea level repositories has been also screened and classified following their sampling interval and level of quality-check, pointing to the necessity of harmonization of the data available with different metadata and series at different repositories. Finally, an assessment of the networks’ capabilities for their usage in different sea level applications has been done, with recommendations that might mitigate the bottlenecks and assure further development of the networks in a coordinated way, being that more necessary in the era of the human-induced climate changes and the sea level rise.
Highlights
65 Coastal sea levels have been monitored for decades by networks of tide gauges in ports and harbours, established by a diverse range of institutions to fulfil their specific needs and requirements
The Mediterranean and Black seas are an example for such a transition – while having a long tradition for sea level observations with several records spanning over a century, the number of modern tide gauge stations are growing rapidly, with data available both in real-time and as a research product at different time resolutions
The sea level sensors, which measure water level height relative to land with high 70 accuracy and high temporal resolution (1-60 min), are essential for monitoring and studying coastal sea level hazards that may threat the coastal strip during episodes of extreme sea levels and coastal flooding, the latter being combination of storm surges, tsunamis, meteotsunamis and infragravity waves occurring atop of ongoing sea level rise (Pugh and Woodworth, 2014)
Summary
65 Coastal sea levels have been monitored for decades by networks of tide gauges in ports and harbours, established by a diverse range of institutions to fulfil their specific needs and requirements. All mentioned hazards are present in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (M/BS hereafter) and pose a threat to densely populated coastal areas, cultural heritage and historical cities lying near the shore (Fig. 1) (Reimann et al, 2018) This is relevant for some regions exposed to substantial sea level variations spanning over a range of frequencies (Fig. 1), from minutes (like meteotsunamis or tsunamis) through hours, days, weeks (storm surges, or planetary wave forcing) and 80 seasonal oscillations, to interannual variability and decadal trends (Pugh and Woodworth, 2014).
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