Temporal scaling behavior of sea-level change in Hong Kong - Multifractal temporally weighted detrended fluctuation analysis

The rise in global sea levels has been recognized by many scientists as an important global research issue. The process of sea-level change has demonstrated a complex scaling behavior in space and time. Large numbers of tide gauge stations have been built to measure sea-level change in the North Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, and Antarctic Ocean. Extensive studies have been devoted to exploring sea-level variation in Asia concerning the Bohai Gulf (China), the Yellow Sea (China), the Mekong Delta (Thailand), and Singapore. Hong Kong, however, a mega city with a population of over 7 million situated in the mouth of the Pear River Estuary in the west and the South China Sea in the east, has yet to be studied, particularly in terms of the temporal scaling behavior of sea-level change.This article presents an approach to studying the temporal scaling behavior of sea-level change over multiple time scales by analyzing the time series of sea-level change in Tai Po Kou, Tsim Bei Tsui, and Quarry Bay from the periods of 1964-2010, 1974-2010, and 1986-2010, respectively. The detection of long-range correlation and multi-fractality of sea-level change seeks answers to the following questions: (1) Is the current sea-level rise associated with and responsible for the next rise over time? (2) Does the sea-level rise have specific temporal patterns manifested by multi-scaling behaviors? and (3) Is the sea-level rise is temporally heterogeneous in the different parts of Hong Kong?Multi-fractal temporally weighted de-trended fluctuation analysis (MF-TWDFA), an extension of multi-fractal de-trended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA), has been applied in this study to identify long-range correlation and multi-scaling behavior of the sea-level rise in Hong Kong. The experimental results show that the sea-level rise is long-range correlated and multi-fractal. The temporal patterns are heterogeneous over space. This finding implies that mechanisms associated with the local ecological environment, hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes, and human activities might have driven a distinct sea-level rise in Hong Kong.

► Temporal scaling process of sea-level change using more than 40 year's tide gauge data. ► Detection of long-range correlation and multi-fractality of sea-level change. ► Mechanisms associated with local hydrodynamic processes and human activities.