Episodic sea level changes in the western Indian Ocean: A review

Abstract

In the past, sea level changes in the Indian Ocean received much less attention than those in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Here the sea level variation in the western part of the Indian Ocean has been considered. Rather than concentrating on the yet unproven, slow, and gradual sea level rise due to the so‐called greenhouse warming, attention is paid to the much more dramatic sea level variations that can occur within a few hours due to storm surges and tsunamis. In that part of the western Indian Ocean that is considered here, the storm surges are generated from the sea level atmospheric pressure fields and tangential surface wind stresses associated with travelling weather systems such as tropical cyclones. One can adapt the results from tsunami runup studies to storm surges since both phenomena fall into the classification of long gravity waves.

Keywords:

• sea level
• Indian Ocean
• temporal changes
• storm surges
• tsunamis
• tropical cyclones