CoAuthors

Anny Cazenave ( Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS), Toulouse, France); Hindumathi K. Palanisamy (Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS), Toulouse, France); Ben Marzeion (University of Bremen, Germany); Frank Paul (University of Zurich, Switzerland); Raymond Le Bris (University of Zurich, Switzerland); Anna Hogg (University of Leeds, UK); Andrew Shepherd (University of Leeds, UK); Petra Döll (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany); Hannes Müller Schmied (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany); Denise Caceres (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany); Johnny A. Johannessen (Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Bergen, Norway); Jan E. Nilsen (Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Bergen, Norway); Roshin P. Raj (Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), Bergen, Norway); Rene Forsberg (DTU Space, Denmark); Per Knudsen (DTU Space, Denmark); Louise Sorensen (DTU Space, Denmark); Valentina Barletta (DTU Space, Denmark); Ole B. Andersen (DTU Space, Denmark); Christopher J. Merchant (University of Reading, UK); Claire Rachel Macintosh (University of Reading, UK); Kristin Novotny (TU Dresden, Germany); Andreas Groh (TU Dresden, Germany); Benjamin Gutknecht (TU Dresden, Germany); Jérôme Benveniste (European Space Agency (ESA-ESRIN), Frascati (Roma), Italy)

For many years, studies of the sea level budget have been a means of assessing and understanding how sea level is changing and what are the causes. Closure of the total sea level budget implies that the observed changes of global mean sea level equal the sum of observed (or otherwise assessed) contributions, namely changes in ocean mass and ocean thermal expansion. Closure of the ocean mass budget implies that the observed ocean mass change equals assessed changes in mass from glaciers, ice sheets, land water storage, snow pack and atmospheric water content. Misclosure of these balances indicates errors in some of the components or contributions from missing or unassessed elements in the budget.
ESA's Climate Change Initiative (CCI) has conducted a number of projects related to sea level, namely the Sea Level CCI project, the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet CCI projects, the Glaciers CCI project and the Sea Surface Temperature CCI project. Using the improved, consistent, and well-documented data products from these CCI projects, it is time to re-assess the sea level budget closure. This is the aim of the CCI Sea Level Budget Closure (SLBC_cci) project.
The project analyzes results based on CCI products in conjunction with data products from ocean profilers (e.g., Argo), GRACE-based ocean mass change assessments, and model-based data for glaciers and land hydrology. Closure of the global mean sea level budget and global ocean mass budget are being investigated in a coherent way and the quality of CCI products is being assessed. In addition, the regional variability of sea level and its steric and mass components are investigated in a case study for the Arctic Ocean. These activities are intended to prepare the way to more comprehensive and more operational assessments of the global and regional sea level budget.
The poster outlines the envisaged developments and prospects from the project. It gives an overview on the status of datasets available and the degree of sea level budget closure at the first iteration of collected datasets.