Sea Level Budget closure

Accurately closing the Sea Level Budget (SLB) — the balance between observed sea level rise and its mass and steric (thermal expansion) components — is crucial for understanding climate change and its impacts. Satellite gravimetry missions like GRACE have played a key role by measuring mass changes, but limitations in spatial and temporal resolution still affect SLB closure.

This study evaluates how upcoming missions — GRACE-C, Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM), and MAGIC — could improve SLB closure using synthetic data generated by ESA’s Earth System Model and an end-to-end simulator. We assess how mission-specific errors compare to real-world SLB residuals, focusing on three timescales: seasonal, interannual, and decadal.

% of SLB residuals explained by the errors from gravity missions at high frequencies and interannual time scales (linear trend and annual signal removed)

Errors reduced at regional scale when using NGGM and MAGIC compared to GRACE-C, except in the arctic ocean.
NGGM substantially enhances the closure of the sea level budget (SLB) along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, in the north atlantic and in key upwelling regions.
MAGIC offers additional improvements over NGGM in polar regions

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