SEA LEVEL TREND AND VARIABILITY IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Abstract. Sea level rise due to climate change is nonuniform globally, necessitating regional estimates. Spatial-temporal behaviour of sea level anomalies (SLAs) in the South China Sea (SCS) was investigated over 24 years period from 1993 to 2016. Based on the spatial distribution of monthly and seasonal mean SLAs in the SCS, the strong regularity of SLAs performed maybe mainly predominantly driven by monsoonal wind. Variations of SLA were different in each month, which was the largest in July and December, and the smallest in April. Positive sea level linear trends were estimated in most cases. The averaged sea level trend in the SCS showed a rise of 4.42 ± 0.25 mm/year from 1993 to 2016. Further investigations are expected from muliti-resources such as ENSO, wind stress, and vertical land movement data.