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Missing Hydrological Contribution to Sea Level Rise
Author(s) -
Kim JaeSeung,
Seo KiWeon,
Jeon Taehwan,
Chen Jianli,
Wilson Clark R.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2019gl085470
Subject(s) - climate change , environmental science , climatology , sea level , sea level rise , stage (stratigraphy) , geology , oceanography , paleontology
Over the past decade, the rate of global mean sea level (GMSL) rise is about 3.5 mm/year. Terrestrial water/ice mass loss to the oceans and ocean volume expansion explain about 3.1 mm/year, indicating that the GMSL budget is not been fully understood. Past estimates from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data have indicated that terrestrial water storage (TWS) is increasing and is thus a mitigating contributor to GMSL rise. However, TWS estimates from GRACE are uncertain mostly due to limitations in GRACE estimates of degree‐1 and degree‐2 order‐0 spherical harmonic coefficients. We obtain an improved estimate of the TWS contribution to GMSL change using revised GRACE estimates of these low‐degree coefficients. For the period 2005–2015, we find that TWS makes an additional contribution to GMSL rise of about 0.32 ± 0.02 mm/year, mostly associated with a TWS decrease. This revised estimate is sufficient to nearly balance the budget of GMSL rise.