Malaysian sea water level pattern derived from 19 years tidal data

Abstract

Long-term water level changes have generally been estimated using tidal data. Tide gauges are common tools used to determine the continuous time series of relative water level. This paper presents an effort to interpret the water level from tidal data over Malaysian seas. There are 21 tide gauge stations involved and taken from Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) with monthly averaged data from 1993 to 2011. The monthly tidal data is then converted to tidal sea level anomaly. For sea level trend analysis, robust fit regression is employed. Next, the sea levels were analysed based on the pattern of seasonal variation and extreme meteorological effects such as El-Nino and La-Nina. In summary, the relative sea level trend in Malaysian seas is rising and varying from 2 to 6.5 mm/yr. This study offers valuable sea level information to be applied in wide range of climatology, related environmental issue such as flood and global warming in Malaysia.