The dynamic of sea level anomaly in the Papua coastal area and its associated response to the climate indices

Abstract

With thousands of islands and a vast coastline, Indonesia is expected to suffer from severe and drastic impacts of sea level rise, not only to coastal urban areas and small islands but also to big islands with wetland ecosystems, such as Papua. Because the coastal areas are very sensitive to climatic and sea level changes, it is important to quantify the trends in sea level and the influences of climate variability in this region. This study aims to analyse the seasonal and interannual sea level anomaly in Papua coastal areas and investigate its associated response to climate indices. This study is performed based on the reprocessed satellite models of sea level height anomaly (SSHA) and Sea Surface Temperature (SST), climate index of Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), Dipole Mode Index (DMI), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), from 1993–2021. The results showed that the rate of sea level rise in Papua is accelerating and significantly higher than the global trend by 0.54–1.03 cm/year. By performing statistical analyses, this study indicates that sea level in the northern waters is more sensitive to climatic phenomena, while sea levels in the southern waters are more responsive to seasonal drivers that influence the SST variability.