Dark-blue horizon: Sea level rise and meteotsunamis on the Finnish coast

• Main Author: Pellikka, Havu
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: vedenkorkeus; Itämeri; rannikkotulvat; säätsunamit; merenpinnan nousu; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Nousu; Hamina; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/316249

This thesis presents research on two topics related to sea level in the Baltic Sea: regional sea level rise and meteotsunamis, i.e. meteorologically generated tsunami waves. While these phenomena act on very different time scales, they are both relevant for estimates of coastal flooding risks. Main objectives of this work are i) to present projections of mean sea level change in Finland by 2100 as location-specific probability distributions that can be used as a basis for decision-making in coastal management, and ii) to study the occurrence of meteotsunamis on the Finnish coast and the weather conditions that create these waves. Global mean sea level is rising in the warming climate. This will affect coastal life worldwide, but sea level does not rise uniformly around the globe. Projections of future sea level rise have large uncertainties, especially because the response of the Antarctic ice sheet to climatic changes is poorly known. This makes the upper tail of the probability distribution of sea level rise hard to pin down. In this work, an ensemble of global sea level rise projections is adjusted regionally to form a probability distribution of regional sea level rise. The results suggest that sea level rise in the Baltic Sea will be about 80% of the global mean, without including the effect of land uplift. To obtain probability distributions of mean sea level change relative to land, the effects of postglacial land uplift and wind-induced changes in mean sea level are combined with the sea level rise distributions. According to the average scenario, the sea level in the Gulf of Finland is expected to rise ca. 30 cm in 2000–2100, while mean sea level decline will continue in the Gulf of Bothnia. However, the high-end scenario projects sea level rise everywhere on the Finnish coast, ranging from 21 cm in Vaasa to 90 cm in Hamina. Meteotsunamis occur in shallow sea areas worldwide and can reach a height of several metres in extreme cases. In the Baltic Sea, such high, inexplicable sea waves are historically ...