National Oceanography Centre

Rising sea levels are frequently cited as one of the most pressing societal consequences of climate change. In order to understand the present day change in sea level we need to place it in the context of historical changes. The primary source of information on sea level change over the past 100-150 years is tide gauges. However, these tide gauges are a globally sparse set of point measurements located largely at the coast. "Global mean sea level" calculated from these tide gauges is therefore biased and is also more variable than than global mean sea level calculated from the past 19 years of satellite altimtery measurements.

The work presented here explores the use of simple statistical approaches which make use of reanalysis wind stress datasets and heat content reconstructions to model the sea level records. It is shown that these simple models have skill in reproducing variability at decadal time-scales. The results suggest that there are active regions of wind stress and heat content in the ocean which affect regional variability in sea level records that point to the atmospheric and oceanic processes which drive the variability. Acceleration seen in the longest continous sea level record at Brest is shown to be partially attributable to changes in wind stress over the past 140 years.