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Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices

This article presents a review of current practice in estimating steric sea level change, focussed on the treatment of uncertainty. Steric sea level change is the contribution to the change in sea level arising from the dependence of density on temperature and salinity. It is a significant component...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: MacIntosh, C. R., Merchant, C. J., von Schuckmann, K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7115123/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32269398
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9387-x
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author MacIntosh, C. R.
Merchant, C. J.
von Schuckmann, K.
author_facet MacIntosh, C. R.
Merchant, C. J.
von Schuckmann, K.
author_sort MacIntosh, C. R.
collection PubMed
description This article presents a review of current practice in estimating steric sea level change, focussed on the treatment of uncertainty. Steric sea level change is the contribution to the change in sea level arising from the dependence of density on temperature and salinity. It is a significant component of sea level rise and a reflection of changing ocean heat content. However, tracking these steric changes still remains a significant challenge for the scientific community. We review the importance of understanding the uncertainty in estimates of steric sea level change. Relevant concepts of uncertainty are discussed and illustrated with the example of observational uncertainty propagation from a single profile of temperature and salinity measurements to steric height. We summarise and discuss the recent literature on methodologies and techniques used to estimate steric sea level in the context of the treatment of uncertainty. Our conclusions are that progress in quantifying steric sea level uncertainty will benefit from: greater clarity and transparency in published discussions of uncertainty, including exploitation of international standards for quantifying and expressing uncertainty in measurement; and the development of community “recipes” for quantifying the error covariances in observations and from sparse sampling and for estimating and propagating uncertainty across spatio-temporal scales.
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spelling pubmed-71151232020-04-06 Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices MacIntosh, C. R. Merchant, C. J. von Schuckmann, K. Surv Geophys Article This article presents a review of current practice in estimating steric sea level change, focussed on the treatment of uncertainty. Steric sea level change is the contribution to the change in sea level arising from the dependence of density on temperature and salinity. It is a significant component of sea level rise and a reflection of changing ocean heat content. However, tracking these steric changes still remains a significant challenge for the scientific community. We review the importance of understanding the uncertainty in estimates of steric sea level change. Relevant concepts of uncertainty are discussed and illustrated with the example of observational uncertainty propagation from a single profile of temperature and salinity measurements to steric height. We summarise and discuss the recent literature on methodologies and techniques used to estimate steric sea level in the context of the treatment of uncertainty. Our conclusions are that progress in quantifying steric sea level uncertainty will benefit from: greater clarity and transparency in published discussions of uncertainty, including exploitation of international standards for quantifying and expressing uncertainty in measurement; and the development of community “recipes” for quantifying the error covariances in observations and from sparse sampling and for estimating and propagating uncertainty across spatio-temporal scales. Springer Netherlands 2016-10-17 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC7115123/ /pubmed/32269398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9387-x Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
MacIntosh, C. R.
Merchant, C. J.
von Schuckmann, K.
Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title_full Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title_fullStr Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title_full_unstemmed Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title_short Uncertainties in Steric Sea Level Change Estimation During the Satellite Altimeter Era: Concepts and Practices
title_sort uncertainties in steric sea level change estimation during the satellite altimeter era: concepts and practices
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7115123/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32269398
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9387-x
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