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Global and regional ocean mass budget closure since 2003

journal contribution
posted on 2024-10-09, 04:05 authored by Carsten Bjerre Ludwigsen, Ole Baltazar Andersen, Ben Marzeion, Jan-Hendrik Malles, Hannes Mueller Schmied, Petra Doell, Christopher WatsonChristopher Watson, Matt KingMatt King
In recent sea level studies, discrepancies have arisen in ocean mass observations obtained from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and its successor, GRACE Follow-On, with GRACE estimates consistently appearing lower than density-corrected ocean volume observations since 2015. These disparities have raised concerns about potential systematic biases in sea-level observations, with significant implications for our understanding of this essential climate variable. Here, we reconstruct the global and regional ocean mass change through models of ice and water mass changes on land and find that it closely aligns with both GRACE and density-corrected ocean volume observations after implementing recent adjustments to the wet troposphere correction and halosteric sea level. While natural variability in terrestrial water storage is important on interannual timescales, we find that the net increase in ocean mass over 20 years can be almost entirely attributed to ice wastage and human management of water resources.

History

Sub-type

  • Article

Publication title

Nature Communications

Volume

15

Issue

1

Article number

1416

Pagination

10

eISSN

2041-1723

ISSN

2041-1723

Department/School

Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences

Publisher

NATURE PORTFOLIO

Publication status

  • Published

Place of publication

England

Rights statement

Copyright 2024 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

13 Climate Action

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