Kinematics of global mean thermosteric sea level during 1993-2019

Because oceans cover 71% of Earth's surface, ocean warming, consequential for thermal expansion of sea water, has been the largest contributor to the global mean sea level rise averaged over the 20th and the early 21st century. This study first generates quasi-observed monthly globally averaged thermosteric sea level time series by re-moving the contributions of global mean sea level budget components, namely, Glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica, and Terrestrial Water Storage from satellite altimetry measured global sea level changes during 1993-2019. A baseline kine-matic model with global mean thermosteric sea level trend and a uniform acceleration is solved to evaluate the per-formance of a rigorous mixed kinematic model. The model also includes coefficients of monthly lagged 60 yearlong cumulative global mean sea surface temperature gradients and control variables of lunisolar origins and repre-sentations for first order autoregressive disturbances. The mixed kinematic model explains 94% (Adjusted R-2)(1) of the total variability in quasi-observed monthly and globally averaged thermosteric time series compared to the 46% of the baseline kinematic model's Adjusted R-2. The esti-mated trend, 1.19 +/- 0.03 mm/yr., is attributed to the long-term ocean warming. Whereas eleven statistically signif-icant (alpha = 0.05) monthly lagged cumulative global mean sea surface temperature gradients each having a memory of 60 years explain the remainder transient global mean thermosteric sea level changes due to the episodic ocean surface warming and cooling during this period. The series also exhibit signatures of a statistically significant contin-gent uniform global sea level acceleration and periodic lu-nisolar forcings.