Thermosteric contribution of warming oceans to the global sea level variations

Abstract

Thermosteric contribution of warming oceans to the global sea level variations during the last century was evaluated at globally distributed 27 tide gauge stations with records over 80 years. The assessment was made using a recently proposed lagged model inclusive of a sea level trend, long and decadal periodicities, and lagged sea surface temperature measurements. The new model solutions revealed that almost all the long period periodic sea level changes experienced at these stations can be attributed to the lagged thermosteric effects of the warming oceans during the 20th century. Meanwhile, statistically significant (p<0.05) anomalous thermosteric contributions to the secular trends, some of them as large as 1.0±0.2 mm/yr, were detected at six tide gauge stations close to the equator and open seas. The findings of this study revealed a more complex impact of the warming oceans at the globally distributed tide gauge stations other than a secular contribution to the sea level trends of the previous studies.

Keywords

• Climate change
• Mean sea level variations
• Thermosteric effects
• Steric effects
• Halosteric effects
• Eustatic effects
• Global sea surface temperature anomalies
• HadSST3 data
• Distributed Lags