Sea level trajectories and recent records at Australian tide gauges

Ben S. Hague; David A. Jones; Jason West; Dörte Jakob

doi:10.1071/ES24039

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Contents Vol 75(2)

Sea level trajectories and recent records at Australian tide gauges

Ben S. Hague

^A ^* , David A. Jones ^B , Jason West

^C and Dörte Jakob ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Vic., Australia.

^B Bureau of Meteorology, Hobart, Tas., Australia.

^C Bureau of Meteorology, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: ben.hague@bom.gov.au, media@bom.gov.au
Media enquiries: media@bom.gov.au

Handling Editor: Anthony Rea

Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science 75, ES24039 https://doi.org/10.1071/ES24039

Submitted: 16 September 2024 Accepted: 21 May 2025 Published: 17 June 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Bureau of Meteorology. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

Abstract

Australian mean sea levels are rising faster than in the past. We find that sea level is accelerating by 0.113 ± 0.065 mm year⁻², based on national tide gauge-based composite mean sea level anomalies from 1966 to 2022. Half of all Australian tide gauges recorded their highest-on-record annual mean sea levels in either 2021 or 2022 and 77% of all current monthly mean sea level records were set since 2010. Record flood levels were set 2.4 times more frequently since 2010 than would be expected without sea level rise and variability. Assuming recent accelerations persist, established methods can be used to estimate that Australian mean sea level will be 0.26 ± 0.03 m above 1995–2014 levels for 2050. This trajectory suggests that higher sea-level rise scenarios represent pathways more consistent with the observed sea-level rise trajectory over the past 50 years.

Keywords: acceleration, Australia, coastal adaptation, coastal flooding, mean sea level, sea level extremes, sea-level rise, tide gauges.

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