Observing Sea Level Changes Using Satellite Altimetry and In Situ Data

corresponding author: N.Flokos

flksnik@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Sea level change is one of the key indicators of climate change with numerous effects such as flooding, erosion of beaches, salt intrusion.  The detailed global picture of sea level and the monitoring of its spatial-temporal changes is performed by Satellite Altimetry (SA). Nowadays, SA data compare well with measurements from the global tide gauge network, but the aim of 0.3 mm/year accuracy in the altimeter derived rate of global mean sea level rise is still not fully met. 

Whilst the precise determination of global and regional sea level rise from SA data is promising, there is however an observational gap in our knowledge regarding the coastal zone. While Tide Gauges (TG) are usually located at the coast, therefore providing coastal sea level measurements, altimeters have difficulties there. Filling this gap becomes important when considering that the impact of sea level rise can be devastating on the coast with effects on society and ecosystems. This makes it even more significant knowing that there are many stretches of the world’s coast that still do not possess in situ level measuring devices.  

This work aims to discuss the available data and methods that link the SA measurements of sea level rise with TG measurements. Whilst there is rich literature on relevant applications, it is important to have a clear and concise methodology on this.

Tide gauge data

Several post processing steps need to be applied to the raw TG data to enrich the raw Sea Surface Heights (SSH) values and make them comparable with SA data. There are several geophysical corrections, such as pressure and wind effects, which can be applied to TG data in order to deduce  Sea Level (SL) and be consistent with altimeter data. High frequency atmospheric effects on TG data are corrected using the Dynamic Atmospheric Correction (DAC) provided by AVISO. One other large uncertainty is the vertical stability of the TG benchmark over time. TG data must be corrected for the Vertical Land Motion (VLM) to enable the comparison of two sea level measurements (TG and SA) and their later integration within the surfaces of the absolute sea heights. The main VLM dataset can be obtained from SONEL database (SONEL 2016) which provides crustal velocities from the continuous GNSS measurements at sites collocated to the TG.

Satellite altimetry data

Whilst Satellite Altimetry over the open ocean is a mature discipline, global altimetry data collected over the coastal ocean remain still largely unexploited. This is because of intrinsic difficulties in the corrections and issues of land contamination in the footprint that have so far resulted in systematic flagging and rejection of these data. In this work, the relevant methodology to overcome these problems and extend the capabilities of current and future altimeters to the coastal zone (coastal altimetry) will be discussed and a number of coastal altimetry data sets will be used (eg SARvatore, X-TRACK, RADS etc). Finally, a practical example using real data sets over the Aegean Sea will be presented.