Sea level rise and its impact on storm surge and tide in Shanghai

Abstract

Based on both the historical tidal gauge and ground subsidence records for the seven stations in Shanghai region, a non-linear statistical model fitting the variation of the mean annual eustatic sea level (ESL) is established to reveal the characteristics of the ESL in the past century and to estimate the mean annual relative sea level (RSL) in the next five decades by the model extrapolation for Shanghai region. The estimated values of the sea level rises are assessed to be fairly reasonable. The impact of the estimated sea level rise in the coming decades on the storm surges and tides in Shanghai region is numerically computed by using the two-dimensional nonlinear storm surge and tide dynamic models.

In addition, on the basis of numerical integration of the same dynamic model, the probable maximum water levels resulting from the RSL in the coming decades are also estimated by the probable optimal combination of the track, intensity, landfall site, incident angle of tropical cyclone and spring tide.