Sea level anomaly extremes impact tropical Pacific Ocean islands, often with too little warning to mitigate risks. With El Niño, such as the strong 2015/16 event, comes weaker trade winds and mean sea level drops exceeding 30 cm in the western Pacific that expose shallow-water ecosystems at low tides. Nearly opposite climate conditions accompany La Niña events, which cause sea level high stands (10–20 cm) and result in more frequent tide- and storm-related inundations that threaten coastlines. In the past, these effects have been exacerbated by decadal sea level variability, as well as continuing global sea level rise. Climate models, which are increasingly better able to simulate past and future evolutions of phenomena responsible for these extremes (i.e., El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Pacific decadal oscillation, and greenhouse warming), are also able to describe, or even directly simulate, associated sea level fluctuations. By compiling monthly sea level anomaly predictions from multiple statistical and dynamical (coupled ocean–atmosphere) models, which are typically skillful out to at least six months in the tropical Pacific, improved future outlooks are achieved. From this multimodel ensemble comes forecasts that are less prone to individual model errors and also uncertainty measurements achieved by comparing retrospective forecasts with the observed sea level. This framework delivers online a new real-time forecasting product of monthly mean sea level anomalies and will provide to the Pacific island community information that can be used to reduce impacts associated with sea level extremes.

Advanced warning of extreme sea level events is an invaluable tool for coastal communities, allowing the implementation of management policies and strategies to minimise loss of life and infrastructure damage. This study is an initial attempt to apply a dynamical coupled oceanatmosphere model to the prediction of seasonal sea level anomalies (SLA) globally for up to 7 months in advance. We assess the ability of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's operational seasonal dynamical forecast system, the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA), to predict seasonal SLA, using gridded satellite altimeter observation-based analyses over the period 1993-2010 and model reanalysis over 1981-2010. Hindcasts from POAMA are based on a 33-member ensemble of seasonal forecasts that are initialised once per month for the period 1981-2010. Our results show POAMA demonstrates high skill in the equatorial Pacific basin and consistently exhibits more skill globally than a forecast based on persistence. Model predictability estimates indicate there is scope for improvement in the higher latitudes and in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Most characteristics of the asymmetric SLA fields generated by ElNino/La Nina events are well represented by POAMA, although the forecast amplitude weakens with increasing lead-time.

Sea level varies on a range of time scales from tidal to decadal and centennial change. To date, little attention has been focussed on the prediction of interannual sea level anomalies. Here we demonstrate that forecasts of coastal sea level anomalies from the dynamical Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model for Australia (POAMA) have significant skill throughout the equatorial Pacific and along the eastern boundaries of the Pacific and Indian Oceans at lead times out to 8 months. POAMA forecasts for the western Pacific generally have greater skill than persistence, particularly at longer lead times. POAMA also has comparable or greater skill than previously published statistical forecasts from both a Markov model and canonical correlation analysis. Our results indicate the capability of physically based models to address the challenge of providing skillful forecasts of seasonal sea level fluctuations for coastal communities over a broad area and at a range of lead times.

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