Current observed global mean sea level rise and acceleration estimated from satellite altimetry and the associated uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract. We present the latest released of the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) record produced by the French space agency CNES and distributed on the AVISO+ website. This dataset is based on reprocessed along-track data, so-called L2P 21, of the reference missions Topex-Poseïdon, Jason-1/-2 and -3. The L2P 21 CNES/AVISO GMSL record covers the period January-1993 to December-2021 and is now delivered with an estimate of its uncertainties following the method presented in Ablain et al. (2019). Based on the latest Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) knowledge, we updated the uncertainty budget of the reference altimetry missions and demonstrate that the CNES/AVISO GMSL record now achieves stability performances of ±0.3 mm/yr at the 90 % confidence level (C. L. ) for its trend and ±0.05 mm/yr2 (90 %C. L. ) for its acceleration over the 29-years of the altimetry record. Thanks to an analysis of the relative contribution of each uncertainty budget contributor, i.e. , the altimeter, the radiometer, the orbit determination, the geophysical corrections, we identified the current limiting factors to the GMSL monitoring stability and accuracy. We find that the radiometer Wet Troposphere Correction (WTC) and the high-frequency errors with timescales shorter than 1-year are the major contributors to the GMSL uncertainty over periods of 10-years (30–70 %), both for the trend and acceleration estimations. For longer periods of 20-years, the TP data quality is still a limitation but more interestingly, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) realisation uncertainties becomes dominant over all the others sources of uncertainty. Such a finding challenges the altimetry observing system as it is designed today and highlights clear topics of research to be explored in the future to help the altimetry community to improve the GMSL accuracy and stability.

Topics & Concepts