Impacts of Basin-Scale Climate Modes on Coastal Sea Level: a Review

Abstract

Global sea level rise (SLR) associated with a warming climate exerts significant stress on coastal societies and low-lying island regions. The rates of coastal SLR observed in the past few decades, however, have large spatial and temporal differences from the global mean, which to a large part have been attributed to basin-scale climate modes. In this paper, we review our current state of knowledge about climate modes’ impacts on coastal sea level variability from interannual-to-multidecadal timescales. Relevant climate modes, their impacts and associated driving mechanisms through both remote and local processes are elaborated separately for the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This paper also identifies major issues and challenges for future research on climate modes’ impacts on coastal sea level. Understanding the effects of climate modes is essential for skillful near-term predictions and reliable uncertainty quantifications for future projections of coastal SLR.