Data-driven reconstruction reveals large-scale ocean circulation control on coastal sea level

Sönke Dangendorf (), Thomas Frederikse, Léon Chafik, John M. Klinck, Tal Ezer and Benjamin D. Hamlington
Additional contact information
Sönke Dangendorf: Old Dominion University
Thomas Frederikse: California Institute of Technology
Léon Chafik: Stockholm University
John M. Klinck: Old Dominion University
Tal Ezer: Old Dominion University
Benjamin D. Hamlington: California Institute of Technology

Nature Climate Change, 2021, vol. 11, issue 6, 514-520

Abstract: Abstract Understanding historical and projected coastal sea-level change is limited because the impact of large-scale ocean dynamics is not well constrained. Here, we use a global set of tide-gauge records over nine regions to analyse the relationship between coastal sea-level variability and open-ocean steric height, related to density fluctuations. Interannual-to-decadal sea-level variability follows open-ocean steric height variations along many coastlines. We extract their common modes of variability and reconstruct coastal sterodynamic sea level, which is due to ocean density and circulation changes, based on steric height observations. Our reconstruction, tested in Earth system models, explains up to 91% of coastal sea-level variability. Combined with barystatic components related to ocean mass change and vertical land motion, the reconstruction also permits closure of the coastal sea-level budget since 1960. We find ocean circulation has dominated coastal sea-level budgets over the past six decades, reinforcing its importance in near-term predictions and coastal planning.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01046-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:11:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1038_s41558-021-01046-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01046-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().