Abstract
Past sea-level changes in the Mediterranean Sea are highly non-uniform
and can deviate significantly from both the global average sea-level
rise and changes in the nearby Atlantic. Understanding the causes of
this spatial non-uniformity is crucial to the success of coastal
adaptation strategies. This, however, remains a challenge owing to the
lack of long sea-level records in the Mediterranean. Previous studies
have addressed this challenge by reconstructing past sea levels through
objective analysis of sea-level observations. Such reconstructions have
enabled significant progress towards quantifying sea-level changes,
however, they have difficulty capturing long-term changes and provide
little insight into the causes of the changes. Here, we combine data
from tide gauges and altimetry with sea-level fingerprints of
contemporary land-mass changes using spatial Bayesian methods to
estimate the sources of sea-level changes in the Mediterranean Sea since
1960. We find that sea level in the Mediterranean rose slowly until 1990
(0.4±0.5 mm yr-1), at which point it started
accelerating significantly, driven by both sterodynamic changes and
land-ice loss, reaching an average rate of 3.4±0.3 mm
yr-1 in the period 2000-2018. The rate of sea-level
rise shows considerable spatial variation in the Mediterranean Sea,
primarily reflecting changes in the large-scale circulation of the
basin. Since 2000, sea level has been rising faster in the Adriatic,
Aegean, and Levantine Seas than anywhere else in the Mediterranean Sea.