Frequency Analysis of Extreme Water Levels Affected by Sea-Level Rise in East and Southeast Coasts of China

Abstract

Chen, Y.; Huang, W., and Xu, S., 2014. Frequency analysis of extreme water levels in east and southeast coasts of China with analysis on effect of sea level rise.Qiantang bore as well as the storm surge are great disasters for river bank protection at the estuary of Qiantang River. Pearl River estuary is also frequently attacked by strong typhoon storm surge. The risk of damage from storm surge is expected to increase in both estuaries, exacerbated by sea level rise (SLR) and possible climate-induced increases in typhoon intensity and frequency. Adequate estimation on extreme water level will be essential to the coastal flood mitigation for both estuary areas with the effect of climate change. In this study, the popular frequency models Weibull, Lognormal, Gumbel, P-III and GEV are compared on Ganpu station located at the estuary of Qiantang River and Denglongshan station in Guangdong province, the optimal GEV model is recommended. For the risky analysis and management concern induced by the shortage of studied data, the estimated 50 year and 100 year extreme water levels respectively at Ganpu and Denglongshan stations are recommended in this study. Both studied stations located at different estuaries are all type II GEV model as the parameter of GEV distribution are higher than 0. The difference of the parameter and the reason causes the difference in the studied stations are analyzed and discussed in this paper. Furthermore, with the estimated 2.9mm/yr SLR by sea level bulletin of China, effect of SLR in frequency analysis on Denglongshan station is discussed.