Western Boundary Sea Level : A Theory, Rule of Thumb, and Application to Climate Models

To better understand coastal sea level variability and changes, a theory that predicts sea levels along a curved western boundary using interior ocean sea level information is proposed. The western boundary sea level at a particular latitude is expressed by the sum of contributions from interior sea levels propagating onto the western boundary by long Rossby waves between that latitude and a higher latitude, and from the western boundary sea level at the higher latitude. This theory is examined by using a linear, reduced gravity model. A comparison between the theory and the model shows good agreement. A simple scaling law (or rule of thumb) derived from the theory provides a measure of the higher-latitude sea level and ocean interior sea level contributions. The theory is then tested using data from 34 climate models in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) for dynamic sea level changes between the end of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The theory captures the nearly uniform sea level rise from the Labrador Sea to New York City (NYC), with a reduction in the increase of sea level farther south toward the equator, qualitatively consistent with the CMIP5 multimodel ensemble, even though the theory underestimates the equatorward reduction rate. Along the South American east coast, the theory successfully reproduced the spatial pattern of the sea level change. The theory suggests a strong link between a sea level rise hot spot along the northeastern coast of North America and the sea level increase in the Labrador Sea, consistent with the result that rates of NYC sea level rise are highly correlated to those in the Labrador Sea in CMIP5 models