Global mean sea level rise during the recent warming hiatus from satellite-based data

ABSTRACT

Satellite remote sensing has provided an unprecedented opportunity to understand the spatio-temporal change of the Earth’s climate system. In this study, we take advantage of the oceanographic satellite-based data to examine the global mean sea level rise, with a focus on a transitional episode (1994–2003) referred to as the onset of recent global warming hiatus. We remove the signals accounted for the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and solar radiation using an Empirical Orthogonal Function and multivariate regression analysis. The trend estimates over the period 1993–2015 are significantly improved in accordance with the reduction of uncertainty by half. Our results associate the observed deceleration of sea level rise during the onset with the climate oscillations. It strengthens a conclusion deduced by an alternative approach using modelling, whilst highlights the robustness of combining satellite-based datasets and climate indices in a reliable statistical estimation.

Acknowledgments

There are no financial conflicts of interests for all authors. We thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for useful comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

G.C. and Q.W. were supported by the fundings from Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41331172, U1406404 and 61361136001) and Outstanding Scientist Project of Ao-Shan Talents Program (No. 2015ASTP-OS15).