title: Closing the sea level budget on a regional scale: Trends and variability on the Northwestern European continental shelf.
abstract: Long-term trends and decadal variability of sea level in the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast have been studied over the period 1958-2014. We model the spatially nonuniform sea level and solid earth response to large-scale ice melt and terrestrial water storage changes. GPS observations, corrected for the solid earth deformation, are used to estimate vertical land motion. We find a clear correlation between sea level in the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast and open ocean steric variability in the Bay of Biscay and west of Portugal, which is consistent with the presence of wind-driven coastally trapped waves. The observed nodal cycle is consistent with tidal equilibrium. We are able to explain the observed sea level trend over the period 1958-2014 well within the standard error of the sum of all contributing processes, as well as the large majority of the observed decadal sea level variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing Delft University of Technology Delft Netherlands.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Frederikse
authors.affiliation: Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing Delft University of Technology Delft Netherlands.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Riva
authors.affiliation: Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing Delft University of Technology Delft Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kleinherenbrink
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies New York City New York USA; Center for Climate Systems Research Columbia University New York City New York USA; Department of Physical Geography Utrecht University Utrecht Netherlands; International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Laxenburg Austria.
authors.forename: Yoshihide
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wada
authors.affiliation: Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht Utrecht University Utrecht Netherlands.
authors.forename: Michiel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van den Broeke
authors.affiliation: Institute of Geography University of Bremen Bremen Germany.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Marzeion
keywords: sea level budget