Status of Observation Data at Ieodo Ocean Research Station for Sea Level Study

Observation data measured at Ieodo Ocean Research Station (IORS) have been utilized in oceanographic and atmospheric studies since 2003. Sea level data observed at the IORS have not been paid attention as compared with many other variables such as aerosol, radiation, turbulent flux, wind, wave, fog, temperature, and salinity. Total sea level rises at the IORS (5.6 mm yr^-1) from both satellite and tide-gauge observations were higher than those in the northeast Asian marginal seas (5.4 mm yr^-1) and the world (4.6 mm yr^-1) from satellite observation from 2009 to 2018. The rates of thermosteric, halosteric, and steric sea level rises were 2.7-4.8, -0.7-2.6, 2.3-7.4 mm yr^-1 from four different calculating methods using observations. The rising rate of the steric sea level was higher than that of the total sea level in the case with additional data quality control. Calculating the non-steric sea level was not found to yield meaningful results, despite the ability to calculate non-steric sea level by simply subtracting the steric sea level from total sea level. This uncertainty did not arise from the data analysis but from a lack of good data, even though tide, temperature, and salinity data were quality controlled two times by Korea Hydrographic and Oceanography Agency. The status of the IORS data suggests that the maintenance management of observation systems, equipment, and data quality control should be improved to facilitate data use from the IORS.