Correlation between temperature, sea level rise and land loss: an assessment along the Sundarbans coast

The geographical location of the Sundarbans, lying along the Bay of Bengal, makes it vulnerable to various natural features such as climate change, sea-level rise, reduction of fluvial input, increase of salinity, etc. Temperature around this region has been observed to be rising leading to an increase in the surface water temperature in the Bay of Bengal along the mangrove forest. As a result, the local sea-level also has been rising which has become a growing threat for this region and is expected to lead to permanent land losses either by inundation or by erosion. In this study, the extent of impacts due to temperature variations along the coastline of Sundarbans was assessed by establishing a correlation between temperature, local sea-level rise, and coastal land changes. Landsat images, spanning from 1989 to 2018 were analyzed to observe the net morphological changes along the coastline. Long-term temperature and tidal water level variations were used to check their trends and finally establish a correlation among them for better understanding.