Sea-Level Trend at the Korean Coast

Abstract

Based on the tide gauge data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) collected at 23 locations in the Korean coast, the long-term sea-level trend was computed using a simple linear regression fit over the recorded length of the monthly mean sea-level data. The computed sea-level trend was also corrected for the vertical land movement due to post glacial rebound(PGR) using the ICE-4G(VM2) model output^12). It was found that the PGR-corrected sea-level trend near Korea was 2.310 ± 2.220 mm/yr, which is higher than the global average at 1.0~20.mm/yr, as assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)^1). The regional distribution of the long-term sea-level trend near Korea revealed that the South Sea had the largest sea-level rise followed by the West Sea and East Sea, respectively, supporting the result of the previous study by Seo et al.^7) However, due to the relatively short record period and large spatial variability, the sea-level trend from the tide gauge data for the Korea coast could be biased with a steric sea-level rise by global warming during the 20th century.