• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.89-105
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• 2008

Sea level and atmospheric pressure data of 1999-2005 from four stations along the Korean east coast were analyzed to understand the sea level variability and its causal mechanism. The results of the wavelet and the auto-spectrum analyses indicate that the sea level fluctuations of 3-17 day period are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, especially in spring to early summer. In this period, the coherency between the sea levels and the atmospheric pressures in a cross-spectrum is high, implying the importance of an inverted barometric effect in generation of the sea level fluctuations. To learn about the sea level variability, the cross-spectrum analyses were applied between the sea levels of the adjacent stations. The results show a case of southward phase propagations along the coast, as in 1999, 2003 and 2005, and an another case of no progressive phase lags between the stations, as in 2000-2002, and 2004. The phase speed in the former case is 12-15 m/s, which is a commonly observed phase speed of coastal Kelvin waves. Generation of such fluctuations seems to be related to low pressure cells developed in the Asian continent in spring and summer and moving eastward over the coastal region north of the stations. The latter case of no progressive phase lag, however, occurs when the low pressure cells developed in the continent move along the region south of the stations. In this case, the northeastward phase propagation with a speed of 5-8 m/s is observed along the southwestern coast of Japan.