As an island nation comprising 60,000 km of open coastline and extensive margins of increasingly urbanised inter-tidal estuarine foreshores, Australia is critically exposed to the global threat posed by rising sea levels into the future. This presentation provides a summary of research undertaken to provide an updated, contemporary assessment of sea level rise around Australia to the end of 2018, based on all available tide gauge records and satellite altimetry, highlighting key emerging trends around the country. The research also provides the first national assessment of vertical land motions (VLM) around the coast, identifying margins more prevalent to subsidence, which in turn exacerbate the localised effects of a rising global mean sea level.

The presentation will also discuss a range of scientific and analytical advancements which have been developed over recent years specifically for sea level research. In turn, these advancements have enabled improved insights into the temporal resolution of current rates of sea level rise and associated accelerations than were previously possible from long tide gauge records. Australia has several high-quality, long records available around the coastline that are suitable for application of these improved sea level and time series analysis techniques.