Review of Sea-Level Budget Components and Their Consistency in the Recent Literature

Closing the global sea-level budget is a central goal of climate research, as failing to do so could indicate that some components are not properly assessed. Yet achieving agreement between the measured total sea-level rise and the sum of its contributions does not necessarily reflect consistency among the individual components. In this study, we compile and compare published estimates from the past two decades for ice-sheet and glacier mass balance, land water storage, and steric expansion, and complement them with mass‑change trends from GRACE-derived products.

For each component, we find a substantial spread among published estimates, often larger than the reported uncertainties. These discrepancies persist even in reconciled or community-based products, particularly in regions with limited observational coverage and where different methodologies, models, or datasets are used. This is especially visible for land water storage and ice-sheet mass balance, and in the last decade also for steric expansion.

These findings suggest that the closure of the sea-level budget can mask compensating errors among its components. Rather than undermining confidence, the aim of our work is to identify where efforts should focus in order to reduce uncertainties and strengthen future assessments of global sea-level change.