Extreme sea levels along the Mexican coasts pose an increasing risk to coastal infrastructure and communities, particularly under the combined influence of tropical cyclones and ongoing sea-level rise. This study analyzes tide-gauge records from the Mexican Pacific and Gulf of Mexico–Caribbean coasts to characterize the statistical behavior and seasonal modulation of extreme sea-level residuals. Astronomical tides were removed through harmonic analysis to isolate the meteorological residual associated with storm-driven processes. Extreme events were evaluated using complementary extreme-value frameworks, including Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distributions applied to monthly maxima and a Peaks-Over-Threshold (POT) approach applied to the continuous residual series with temporal declustering and Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) fitting. While both approaches consistently capture regional patterns, the POT–GPD framework is adopted as the primary basis for return-level estimation due to its explicit representation of event-scale extremes. The results reveal marked regional variability. Pacific stations exhibit bounded or near-Gumbel behavior (ξ ≈ −0.30 to −0.02) and a strong seasonal concentration of extremes during the tropical cyclone season. In contrast, Gulf of Mexico–Caribbean stations display higher absolute extremes and a broader seasonal footprint, with Veracruz showing a tendency toward heavier-tailed behavior (ξ ≈ 0.13). Return levels for a 25-year return period range from approximately 0.85–0.95 m in the Pacific to about 1.7 m in Veracruz. Longer return periods (e.g., 100 years) exceed 2.2 m in Veracruz but are associated with substantial uncertainty due to record-length limitations. The analysis of ENSO variability indicates that ENSO acts primarily as a secondary modulator of background sea-level variability rather than a deterministic driver of extreme events, with the largest anomalies typically associated with tropical cyclone activity. Overall, the results demonstrate that extreme sea levels along the Mexican coasts are governed by region-specific forcing and tail behavior requiring localized extreme-value modeling strategies. The proposed framework provides a robust and reproducible baseline for coastal hazard assessment and supports the integration of sea-level rise into future risk and design analyses.
Calderón-Vega et al. (Fri,) studied this question.