Concepts and Terminology for Sea Level: Mean, Variability and Change, Both Local and Global

Jonathan M. Gregory; Stephen M. Griffies; Chris W. Hughes; Jason A. Lowe; John A. Church; Ichiro Fukimori; Natalya Gomez; Robert E. Kopp; Felix Landerer; Gonéri Le Cozannet; Rui M. Ponte; Detlef Stammer; Mark E. Tamisiea; Roderik S.W. van de Wal

doi:10.1007/s10712-019-09525-z

Concepts and Terminology for Sea Level: Mean, Variability and Change, Both Local and Global

Jonathan M. Gregory^*, Stephen M. Griffies, Chris W. Hughes, Jason A. Lowe, John A. Church, Ichiro Fukimori, Natalya Gomez, Robert E. Kopp, Felix Landerer, Gonéri Le Cozannet, Rui M. Ponte, Detlef Stammer, Mark E. Tamisiea, Roderik S.W. van de Wal

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

Abstract

Changes in sea level lead to some of the most severe impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Consequently, they are a subject of great interest in both scientific research and public policy. This paper defines concepts and terminology associated with sea level and sea-level changes in order to facilitate progress in sea-level science, in which communication is sometimes hindered by inconsistent and unclear language. We identify key terms and clarify their physical and mathematical meanings, make links between concepts and across disciplines, draw distinctions where there is ambiguity, and propose new terminology where it is lacking or where existing terminology is confusing. We include formulae and diagrams to support the definitions.

Original language	English
Number of pages	39
Journal	Surveys in Geophysics
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-019-09525-z
Publication status	Published - Apr 2019

Funding

We thank Cathy Raphael from NOAA/GFDL for kindly drafting the figures, and John Krasting, Jianjun Yin, Sophie Nowicki, Angélique Melet, Carl Wunsch, Unnikrishnan, Chris Merchant and Déborah Idier for useful comments. We are grateful to Don Chambers and the other (anonymous) reviewer for their encouraging remarks and helpful suggestions for improvement. Rui Ponte acknowledges support from NASA Grant NNH16CT01C. John Church was partially supported by the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research, a joint research centre between QNLM and CSIRO. Jonathan Gregory’s work was supported by Grant NE/R000727/1 from the UK Natural Environment Research Council on “Addressing the Grand Challenge of regional sea level change prediction”. The Grand Challenge steering committee provided a forum for discussions during the preparation of this paper. We are grateful to Palanimuthu and colleagues for their careful typesetting of this complicated manuscript.

Keywords

Concepts
Sea level
Terminology

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Gregory, J. M., Griffies, S. M., Hughes, C. W., Lowe, J. A., Church, J. A., Fukimori, I., Gomez, N., Kopp, R. E., Landerer, F., Cozannet, G. L., Ponte, R. M., Stammer, D., Tamisiea, M. E., & van de Wal, R. S. W. (2019). Concepts and Terminology for Sea Level: Mean, Variability and Change, Both Local and Global. Surveys in Geophysics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-019-09525-z

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AU - Fukimori, Ichiro

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AU - Landerer, Felix

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Concepts and Terminology for Sea Level: Mean, Variability and Change, Both Local and Global

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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