Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices

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• 作者：C. R. MacIntosh ; C. J. Merchant ; K. von Schuckmann
• 关键词：In situ observations ; Satellite altimetry ; Uncertainty ; Steric sea level ; Global sea level
• 刊名：Surveys in Geophysics
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：38
• 期：1
• 页码：59-87
• 全文大小：2069KB
• 刊物类别：Earth and Environmental Science
• 刊物主题：Geophysics/Geodesy; Earth Sciences, general; Astronomy, Observations and Techniques;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0956
• 卷排序：38

文摘

This article presents a review of current practice in estimating steric sea level change, focussed on the treatment of uncertainty. Steric sea level change is the contribution to the change in sea level arising from the dependence of density on temperature and salinity. It is a significant component of sea level rise and a reflection of changing ocean heat content. However, tracking these steric changes still remains a significant challenge for the scientific community. We review the importance of understanding the uncertainty in estimates of steric sea level change. Relevant concepts of uncertainty are discussed and illustrated with the example of observational uncertainty propagation from a single profile of temperature and salinity measurements to steric height. We summarise and discuss the recent literature on methodologies and techniques used to estimate steric sea level in the context of the treatment of uncertainty. Our conclusions are that progress in quantifying steric sea level uncertainty will benefit from: greater clarity and transparency in published discussions of uncertainty, including exploitation of international standards for quantifying and expressing uncertainty in measurement; and the development of community “recipes” for quantifying the error covariances in observations and from sparse sampling and for estimating and propagating uncertainty across spatio-temporal scales.