Understanding Sea Level

Understanding Sea Level

Key Indicators

Steric Height

Global thermosteric height changes computed from the gridded temperature and salinity files made by Scripps and documented in Roemmich and Gilson, 2009, DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2009.03.004. This is an indicator for how the changing ocean heat content changes the sea surface height over time.

Steric height was computed from these data between the surface and 2000 m. The global mean is computed as described in this paper: Llovel et al., 2014

Data shown are latest available, given time needed to allow for processing.

Missions

Steric Height

Credit: Scripps/JPL

Rate of Change

1.1

(± 0.2) mm/yr

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