Projections of Tidal Heights in Climate Change Scenarios for an Amazon Metropolis

dos Santos V.C.; Blanco C.; Falcón C.T.; de Sousa Barroso A.L.; da Silva Cruz J.; de Mendonça L.M. · Earth Systems and Environment (2025) · DOI: 10.1007/s41748-025-00819-4

Resumen

Climate change and sea level rise may increase pressure on Belém’s drainage network, which is already affected by the tides that invade the city. Due to insufficient data and the interference of river flows bordering the study area, current methods are limited in analysing the complexity of the climate variables involved in tidal simulation. Thus, to fill this gap, this study proposes a mathematical model based on Bayesian inference techniques to provide hourly forecasts of current and future tidal heights associated with mean sea level projection data from climate scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5). Statistical performance indicated that MCMC has good predictive capacity, considering a 95% reliability in tidal height simulations, returning KGE and NSE values above 0.9 and RMSE values below 0.035 m in both calibration and validation. The MCMC model proposed in this study accurately reproduced the tidal amplitude and phase, both spring and neap tides, despite the influence of river flow, has proven to be suitable in scenarios where measurements are scarce or have high variability. The set of maximum tidal values associated with sea level rises above 4 m were more frequent in the simulations 2050 onward for the SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 climate scenarios, demonstrating that coastal flooding rates will be significantly higher if adaptation measures to mitigate the effects in the most vulnerable areas are not implemented in the near future. © King Abdulaziz University and Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional de Moquegua