Regional Sea level change in the Arctic Ocean from a combination of radar and laser altimetry, tide gauges and ocean models

Lack of adequate spatial and temporal sea level observations in the Arctic Ocean is one of the most challenging problems in the study of changes in sea level and ocean circulation in the Arctic Ocean today. Especially as sea level variation in the Arctic Ocean plays an important role in the global climate system. Only a few tide gauges with long time series exists (1933-> present). Preliminarily investigations show that several of these are not indicative of sea level changes but rather of changes in river flows due to their position so a careful editing is required. The use of satellite altimetry (1992->present) is hampered due to a suite of problems. The error on sea level recovery increases, standard retracking removes most data in areas of sea ice and furthermore most of the Arctic is not covered due to the inclination of the satellites. Only the radar altimeters on board ERS and ENVISAT and the laser altimeter on board ICESAT have so far provided sparse information about Arctic sea level change. However, the combined relatively long operation period of the three satellites has now made it possible to investigate annual and decadal sea level variations. Together with similar results from ocean models like GECCO, MICOM and University of Washington Ocean model we aim to improve the recovery of sea level changes in the Arctic Ocean on annual to inter-decadal scale and the first result for this work will be presented. The presentation is a contribution to the EU supported projects MONARCH and MyOcean.