Estimation of extreme sea levels along the Bangladesh coast due to storm surge and sea level rise using EEMD and EVA

Abstract

Extreme sea levels due to storm surge and future sea level rise (SLR) in the year 2050 are estimated using ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and extreme value analysis (EVA) based on long‐term sea level records from Hiron Point (HP) on the coast of western Bangladesh. EEMD is an adaptive method that can detrend the nonlinear trend and separate the tidal motions from the original sea level records to reconstruct storm surge levels at HP. The reconstructed storm surge levels are then applied to EVA to obtain the extreme storm surges in the target return periods at a 95% confidence interval (CI). The 30, 50, and 100 year return levels at HP obtained by EVA are 1.59, 1.66, and 1.75 m. The SLR trend obtained from EEMD is 4.46 mm/yr over April 1990 to March 2009, which is larger than the recent altimetry‐based global rate of 3.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr over the period from 1993 to 2007. The resulting SLR in 2050 is estimated as 0.34 m. Therefore, the extreme sea level in 2050 due to SLR and the storm surge at a 100 year return level would be 2.09 m (95% CI from 1.91 to 2.48 m). The SLR depends not only on changes in the mass and volume of sea water but also on other factors, such as local subsidence, river discharge, sediment and the effects of vegetation. The residual nonlinear trend of SLR obtained from EEMD can be regarded as an adaptive sea level after considering those factors and their nonlinearity.