DGFI-TUM - Sea Level Change

Cross Cutting Research Topics

Sea Level Change

DGFI-TUM applies its cross-calibrated multi-mission altimetry dataset in studies of sea level change on global and regional scales over several decades. The combination of different successive missions provides long-term time series and stable trend estimates. In addition, analysis of mission data from different orbits improves spatial data distribution and allows for the extraction of refined regional information.

One of the most challenging tasks in deriving regional sea level trends is to transition from along-track measurements (ground track profiles) to regular grids and calculate representative global or regional averages. Depending on the interpolation method, different errors may result in the calculated sea level trends that need to be treated accordingly. Other challenges include shallow water areas, coastal regions, and areas (temporarily) covered by sea ice, where special pre-processing of the data needs to be developed. In addition to sea level changes and trends on global and regional scales, DGFI-TUM aims to estimate reliable error information for the calculated changes.

Information of the mean sea level and its evolution can be found at OpenADB.

Related projects

Related data products

Sea Level Changes in the North Sea (1995-2019): North SEAL
Sea Level Changes in the Baltic Sea (1995-2019): Baltic SEAL

Rate of sea level rise from multi-mission analysis (1993-2017 )

Selected Publications

Dettmering D., Müller F. L., Oelsmann J., Passaro M., Schwatke C., Restano M., Benveniste J., Seitz F.: North SEAL: a new dataset of sea level changes in the North Sea from satellite altimetry. Earth System Science Data, 13(8), 3733-3753, 10.5194/essd-13-3733-2021, 2021

(Open Access)

Passaro M., Müller F.L., Oelsmann J., Rautiainen L., Dettmering D., Hart-Davis M.G., Abulaitijiang A., Andersen O.B., Høyer J., Madsen K., Ringgaard I., Särkkä J., Scarrott R., Schwatke C., Seitz F., Tuomi L., Restano M., Benveniste J.: Absolute Baltic Sea Level Trends in the Satellite Altimetry Era: A Revisit. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8, 10.3389/fmars.2021.647607, 2021

(Open Access)

Benveniste J., Birol F., Calafat F., Cazenave A., Dieng H., Gouzenes Y., Legeais J.F., Léger F., Niño F., Passaro M., Schwatke C., Shaw A. (The Climate Change Initiative Coastal Sea Level Team): Coastal sea level anomalies and associated trends from Jason satellite altimetry over 2002–2018. Nature Scientific Data, 7, 357, 10.1038/s41597-020-00694-w, 2020

(Open Access)

Gouzenes Y., Léger F., Cazenave A., Birol F., Bonnefond P., Passaro M., Nino F., Almar R., Laurain O., Schwatke C., Legeais J.-F., Benveniste J.: Coastal sea level rise at Senetosa (Corsica) during the Jason altimetry missions. Ocean Science, 1165–1182, 10.5194/os-16-1165-2020, 2020

(Open Access)

Rose S.K., Andersen O.B., Passaro M., Ludwigsen C.A., Schwatke C.: Arctic Ocean Sea Level Record from the Complete Radar Altimetry Era: 1991–2018. Remote Sensing, 11(14), 1672, 10.3390/rs11141672, 2019

(Open Access)

Deutsches Geodätisches Forschungsinstitut

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Florian Seitz

Technische Universität München
Arcisstraße 21
80333 München