Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas

Abstract Regional relative sea level changes are most relevant for coastal communities and remain challenging to understand. China’s adjacent seas are among the world’s most vulnerable regions to sea level rise. This paper investigates the sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas over the past 20...

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Main Authors: Yang Li, Jinyun Guo, Yu Sun, Jiangcun Zhou, Heping Sun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-07-01
Series:Scientific Reports
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06214-3
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author Yang Li
Jinyun Guo
Yu Sun
Jiangcun Zhou
Heping Sun
author_facet Yang Li
Jinyun Guo
Yu Sun
Jiangcun Zhou
Heping Sun
author_sort Yang Li
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Regional relative sea level changes are most relevant for coastal communities and remain challenging to understand. China’s adjacent seas are among the world’s most vulnerable regions to sea level rise. This paper investigates the sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas over the past 20 years. We use multiple time-varying gravity field data and steric data to assess the uncertainties of some components in the sea level budget and the contributions of mass loss from ice sheets, glaciers, and terrestrial water storage changes to regional relative sea level changes were estimated using sea level fingerprints. The sea level budget results based on ensemble mean data show that the root mean square errors of the budget residuals in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, and Northwest Pacific are 40±3 mm, 52±4 mm, 36±2 mm, 23±2 mm, and 11±1 mm, respectively. A single dataset fails to close the long-term sea level trends for all regions within a 65% confidence interval. We discussed the impacts of each component on the budget residuals and identified steric data and the ocean dynamics model as the main reasons for the excessive residuals. The de-aliasing product of the GRACE satellite, AOD1B model, is primarily responsible for the strong interannual signals in the residuals of the sea level budget in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea.
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spelling doaj-art-e75a71c2573b454bb25b71babd16a6682025-08-20T03:45:23ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-07-0115111510.1038/s41598-025-06214-3Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seasYang Li0Jinyun Guo1Yu Sun2Jiangcun Zhou3Heping Sun4State Key Laboratory of Precision Geodesy, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of SciencesCollege of Geodesy and Geomatics, Shandong University of Science and TechnologyKey Lab of Spatial Data Mining and Information Sharing, Ministry of Education, Fuzhou UniversityState Key Laboratory of Precision Geodesy, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of SciencesState Key Laboratory of Precision Geodesy, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of SciencesAbstract Regional relative sea level changes are most relevant for coastal communities and remain challenging to understand. China’s adjacent seas are among the world’s most vulnerable regions to sea level rise. This paper investigates the sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas over the past 20 years. We use multiple time-varying gravity field data and steric data to assess the uncertainties of some components in the sea level budget and the contributions of mass loss from ice sheets, glaciers, and terrestrial water storage changes to regional relative sea level changes were estimated using sea level fingerprints. The sea level budget results based on ensemble mean data show that the root mean square errors of the budget residuals in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, and Northwest Pacific are 40±3 mm, 52±4 mm, 36±2 mm, 23±2 mm, and 11±1 mm, respectively. A single dataset fails to close the long-term sea level trends for all regions within a 65% confidence interval. We discussed the impacts of each component on the budget residuals and identified steric data and the ocean dynamics model as the main reasons for the excessive residuals. The de-aliasing product of the GRACE satellite, AOD1B model, is primarily responsible for the strong interannual signals in the residuals of the sea level budget in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06214-3Regional sea level budgetSea level fingerprintsStericGRACE
spellingShingle Yang Li
Jinyun Guo
Yu Sun
Jiangcun Zhou
Heping Sun
Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
Scientific Reports
Regional sea level budget
Sea level fingerprints
Steric
GRACE
title Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
title_full Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
title_fullStr Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
title_full_unstemmed Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
title_short Investigating the closures of sea level budgets in China’s adjacent seas
title_sort investigating the closures of sea level budgets in china s adjacent seas
topic Regional sea level budget
Sea level fingerprints
Steric
GRACE
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06214-3
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