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13.6: Regional Sea Level Changes

It is likely that regional sea level changes will differ substantially from the global mean.  Regional sea level can be affected by local perturbations in the climate system, extreme weather events, ocean dynamical process, changes to the ocean floor, and even gravity anomalies due to changes in mass distribution.  Regional sea level will adjust to change in local atmospheric pressure, which explains why there is so much variability with regional sea level.  Figure 13.17 shows that predicted pressure changes in the tropics and high latitudes will have significant effects on sea level during this century. 

 

 

Another key variable in regional sea level change is the increasing freshwater input that is predicted for the 21st century.  This freshwater would come from melting land ice, changes in land surface hydrology and/or changes in groundwater extraction.  Depending on where the input is entering the ocean will determine the magnitude of regional variation (Figure 13.18). Taking into account all these contributors, the CMIP5 ensemble models runs are able to project regional sea level change on a decadal scale up to 2100 (Figure 13.20).  It is very likely that 95% of the world’s ocean will experience a positive relative regional sea level change in the next century.  Those regions that will experience a negative relative sea level change are located in areas of isostatic rebound resulting from melting ice sheets.  Sea level could rise 55 cm along coastlines for RCP 4.5 and as much as 80 cm for RCP 8.5.  Under RCP 8.5 it is possible that 72% of coastlines will experience a change equal to +/- 20 % GMSLR.  However, due to smaller scale dynamic processes, the natural variability will be significant such that only longer-term observational records will be able to display any trends.  Additionally, predictions of regional scale GMSL changes are dependent on the initial conditions so there is still uncertainty attributed to the observations used to initialize the models.  

Figure13.17: Projected mean sea level change (meters) due to atmospheric pressure changes for the 2081-2100 time period relative to 1986-2005.  (a) change under RCP 4.5, and (b) under RCP 8.5.  

Figure13.18: Mean contributions to sea level change (meters): (a) glacial isostatic rebound, (b) glaciers, and (c) ice-sheet surface mass balance

Figure 13.20: Projected mean regional sea level change (meters)  from CMIP5 ensemble for RCP scenarios (a) 2.6, (b) 4.5, (c) 6.0, and (d) 8.5 for the 2081-2100 period relative to 1986-2005.  

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