Monitoring the king tide phenomenon over Malacca Straits and South China Sea from space geodetic missions

Abstract

At the end of year 2016, the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia has been hit by the flood. The low-lying area along the coastline was flooded with seawater causes the villagers to be moved to the relief centre, while the flood caused a lot of loss and damage to their properties. This flood happened because the phenomenon called king tide had occurred during that day. This king tide is formed when the Moon is very close to the Earth (at its closest perigee) and in the New Moon or Full Moon phase. This has brought sudden increase in tide magnitude. This phenomenon can be studied in order to help the early decision-making and proper planning to be rolled out. There are bunch of technologies that are made available which can be used to study the tide efficiently. One of the following technologies is by using space geodetic technique, the satellite altimeter. Satellite altimeter is the geodetic space technique which is designed for the study of the ocean. Compared to the conventional method of observing tide using tide gauge, this satellite altimeter can give the larger spatial coverage on tide especially on deep ocean region and near coastal region. In this research, sea level data is processed and derived using Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS). Altimetry-derived sea level data is used to monitor the king tide phenomenon in order to see their pattern and magnitude by comparing to the normal perigee days on the past year. This satellite altimeter is utilized to study the area of interest, which is at Malacca Strait and South China Sea. The result clearly shows that the perigee phenomenon which occurred on November 14 gave a significant impact on the tidal magnitude. The verification process between the satellite altimetry and tidal data also indicates a good argument for the root-mean-square error and correlation coefficient. The outcomes show that the satellite altimeter can be used as a tool to observe and monitor the king tide phenomenon particularly in large-scale area.