CoAuthors

Anny Cazenave (LEGOS/ISSI, France); Fabien Léger (LEGOS, France); Birol Florence (LEGOS, France); Passaro Marcello (TUM, Germany); Nino Fernando (LEGOS, France); Francisco Calafat (NOC, United Kingdom); Shaw Andrew (SKYMAT, United Kingdom); Legeais Jean-François (CLS, France); Benveniste Jérôme (ESA, Italy); Schwatke Christian (TUM, Germany); Dieng Habib (OceanNext/LEGOS, France)

Climate-related sea level changes in the world coastal zones result from the superposition of the global mean rise due to ocean warming and land ice melt, regional changes mostly caused by non-uniform ocean thermal expansion and salinity changes, and small-scale coastal processes (e.g., shelf currents, wind & waves changes, fresh water input from rivers, etc.). So far, satellite altimetry has provided global gridded sea level time series up to 10-15 km to the coast only, preventing estimation of sea level changes very close to the coast. In the context of the ESA Climate Change Initiative project, we are engaged in a reprocessing of high-resolution (20 Hz) altimetry data of the classical missions along coastal zones using the ALES (Adaptative Leading Edge Subwaveform) retracker combined with the XTRACK system dedicated to improve geophysical corrections at the coast. This work led to generate a new coastal sea level product based on complete reprocessing of raw radar altimetry waveforms from the Jason-1, Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions. Here we present a 16-year-long (June 2002 to May 2018), high-resolution (20-Hz), along-track sea level dataset at monthly interval, together with associated sea level trends, at 429 coastal sites in six regions (Northeast Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, West Africa, North Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and Australia).