Exploring Sources of Uncertainty in Steric Sea‐Level Change Estimates

Publication date: Wednesday 14 October 2020

Ocean temperature and salinity variations lead to changes in sea level, known as steric sea‐level change. Steric variations are important contributors to sea‐level change and reflect how the oceans have been responding to global warming. For this reason, several recent studies have quantified the contribution of steric variations to global and regional sea‐level change. However, the reported rates largely differ between studies. NIOZ PhD student Carolina Camargo made a video to explain and summarize her recent publication on this subject.

In this paper, publised in JGR Oceans recently, Carolina, together with other collegues at NIOZ Yerseke, looked at how the use of different temperature and salinity data sets can be one of the causes of the different estimates of steric sea‐level change published so far. They also investigated how different methods (noise models) used to obtain the rate of change can be another source of different results. They found that the rate of change can vary up to 2 mm/year for the global mean as a result of different data sets and methods used. Regionally, differences can reach up to several tens of millimeters per year. They show that the noise models should always be carefully chosen for each region, so that the rate of change is accurately estimated.