Contribution of climate-driven change in continental water storage to recent sea-level rise

doi:10.1073/pnas.2134014100

Contribution of climate-driven change in continental water storage to recent sea-level rise

^*U.S. Geological Survey, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, P.O. Box 308, Princeton, NJ 08534; and ^‡Laboratoire d'Etudes en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiales, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, 31400 Toulouse, France

Edited by Carl Wunsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (received for review June 28, 2003)

Abstract

Using a global model of continental water balance, forced by interannual variations in precipitation and near-surface atmospheric temperature for the period 1981–1998, we estimate the sea-level changes associated with climate-driven changes in storage of water as snowpack, soil water, and ground water; storage in ice sheets and large lakes is not considered. The 1981–1998 trend is estimated to be 0.12 mm/yr, and substantial interannual fluctuations are inferred; for 1993–1998, the trend is 0.25 mm/yr. At the decadal time scale, the terrestrial contribution to eustatic (i.e., induced by mass exchange) sea-level rise is significantly smaller than the estimated steric (i.e., induced by density changes) trend for the same period, but is not negligibly small. In the model the sea-level rise is driven mainly by a downtrend in continental precipitation during the study period, which we believe was generated by natural variability in the climate system.

Footnotes

↵ † To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cmilly{at}usgs.gov.
This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
Abbreviations: LaD, Land Dynamics; CMAP, Climate Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation; ISBA, Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere.