Coastal sea level anomalies and associated trends from Jason satellite altimetry over 2002-2018 [Data paper]

• Main Authors: Benveniste, J., Birol, F., Calafat, F., Anny, C., Dieng, H., Gouzenes, Y., Legeais, J. F., Leger, F., /Nino, Fernando, Passaro, M., Schwatke, C., Shaw, A., Climate Change Initiative Coastal Sea Level Team
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010079964

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 caused by non-uniform ocean thermal expansion and salinity changes, and by the solid Earth response to current water mass redistribution and associated gravity change, plus 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 10-15km to the coast only, preventing estimation of sea level changes very close to the coast. 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, Western Africa, North Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and Australia). This new coastal sea level product is based on complete reprocessing of raw radar altimetry waveforms from the Jason-1, Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions.