@article {2749, title = {Contribution of thermal expansion to present-day sea-level change revisited}, journal = {Global and Planetary Change}, volume = {47}, year = {2005}, month = {05/2005}, pages = {1-16}, abstract = {We investigate the thermosteric (i.e., due to temperature only) sea-level change over the last 50 years using two global ocean temperature data sets recently published (Levitus et al., 2000a [Levitus, S., Stephens, C.M., Antonov, J.I., Boyer, T.P., 2000a. Yearly and year-season upper ocean temperature anomaly fields, 1948 1998, pp. 23, U.S. Gov. Printing Office, Washington, DC] and Ishii et al., 2003 [Ishii, M., Kimoto, M., Kachi, M., 2003. Historical ocean subsurface temperature analysis with error estimates, Monthly Weather Rev., 131, 51 73]). These data sets which provide gridded temperatures, down to 3000 m and 500 m respectively, are based on interpolation schemes of raw historical profiles over 1950 1998. We find that the two data sets compare well over 1950 1990, both in terms of thermosteric sea-level trends and global mean. Some difference is noticed however beyond 1990, due to differences in the raw temperature data processing. Analyses based on {\textquoteleft}Empirical Orthogonal Function{\textquoteright} show that the interannual variability of the thermosteric sea level is dominated by the signatures of El Ni{\~n}o Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation and influenced by North Atlantic Oscillation. As a result, regional thermosteric sea-level trends are not stationary on a century time scale and have a typical lifetime on the order of a decade. In terms of global mean, the rate of thermosteric sea-level change computed over 10-year windows displays high variability, with values reaching up to three times the 40-year (1950 1990) average at some periods. Even negative values are noticed at other periods. One important consequence is that the pattern of sea-level trends derived from Topex/Poseidon altimetry over 1993 2003, which is mainly caused by thermal expansion, is very likely a non-permanent feature. Thus past and future extrapolation based on this 10-year altimetry pattern should be considered with caution.}, keywords = {ice, sea_level, steric, topex}, doi = {10.1016/j.gloplacha.2004.11.016}, url = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005GPC....47....1L}, author = {Lombard, A. and Cazenave, A. and Le Traon, P.-Y. and Ishii, M.} }