Trend of Sea Level Height during the last 53 years related to terrestrial water storage
Abstract
The Land surface models (LSM) are able to evaluate the hydrological balance over land when precipitation, radiation and the meteorological state of the atmosphere are prescribed. If the model includes a runoff routine scheme and some slow component of land water in the ground, the land surface model evaluates the water storage, including a contribution of ground water. The LSM Orchidee, of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace was designed for this purpose and was used in this study. The data set needed for a long term evaluation of water storage was constructed by Ngo Duc et al (JGR, 2005); they used NCEP NCAR data, corrected by the temperature and precipitation from CRU data set, and interpolated them. These data were used to simulate with Orchidee the land water storage changes from 1948 to 2000. These variations, expressed in equivalent sea level height, show large decadal variability with an amplitude of few mm, but no trend. These model results are rather difficult to ascertain and some comparisons with evaluations from Topex Poseidon or Grace will be shown. A high correlation between thermosteric sea level decadal fluctuations and these continental water variations was noticed. This correlation is explained by a simple physical mechanism, relating sea surface temperature and precipitation.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006AGUFM.G14A..03L
- Keywords:
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- 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218;
- 1631;
- 3322);
- 1876 Water budgets