HR: 1340h
AN: G33B-1244    [Abstracts]
TI: Building a Climate Record of Sea Level Change
AU: * Choe, J
EM: jchoe@colorado.edu
AF: Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research University of Colorado at Boulder, 431 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, United States
AU: Nerem, R S
EM: nerem@colorado.edu
AF: Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research University of Colorado at Boulder, 431 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, United States
AU: Chambers, D
EM: chambers@csr.utexas.edu
AF: Center for Space Research The University of Texas at Austin, 3925 West Braker Lane, Suite 200, Austin, TX 78759, United States
AU: Mitchum, G
EM: mitchum@marine.usf.edu
AF: College of Marine Science University of South Florida, 140 Seventh Ave South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, United States
AU: Leuliette, E
EM: Eric.Leuliette@noaa.gov
AF: Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1335 East-West Hwy, E/RA31, Silver Spring, MD 20910, United States
AB: Sea level change is a sensitive indicator of climate change because it responds both to changes in ocean temperature (where most of the excess heat from climate change is being absorbed) as well as to exchanges of water mass between the continents and the oceans (which is dominated over long time periods by the melting of ice in glaciers and ice sheets and changes in the water cycle). Therefore, the record of sea level change collected by the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 (and soon Jason-2) satellite altimeter missions is critically important for climate change studies. However, the use of satellite altimeter data for this purposes pushes the accuracy limits of the measurements, and thus great care must be taken to monitor the performance of the instruments and their biases, investigate anomalies, improve the measurement corrections, and place the measurements in a well- defined Earth-fixed reference frame. We have carefully built a publicly-accessible climate record of sea level change using TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 altimeter data, which provides many different sea level products for use by various investigations. In addition, results from calibrating this record using tide gauges are shown. This climate record will help scientists understand how the Earth is responding to climate change, improve predictions of future sea level change, as well as ascertain the socio-economic impacts.
UR: http://sealevel.colorado.edu
DE: 1640 Remote sensing (1855)
DE: 1641 Sea level change (1222, 1225, 4556)
DE: 1855 Remote sensing (1640)
DE: 4513 Decadal ocean variability (1616, 1635, 3305, 4215)
DE: 4556 Sea level: variations and mean (1222, 1225, 1641)
SC: Geodesy [G]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting