Mechanisms of the 40–70 Day Variability in the Yucatan Channel Volume Transport

The Yucatan Channel connects the Caribbean Sea with the Gulf of Mexico and is the main outflow region of the Caribbean Sea. Moorings in the Yucatan Channel show high-frequent variability in kinetic energy (50–100 days) and transport (20–40 days), but the physical mechanisms controlling this variability are poorly understood. In this study, we...

Estimating decadal variability in sea level from tide gauge records: An application to the North Sea

One of the primary observational data sets of sea level is represented by the tide gauge record. We propose a new method to estimate variability on decadal time scales from tide gauge data by using a state space formulation, which couples the direct observations to a predefined state space model by using a Kalman filter. The model consists of...

Estimation of mass change trends in the Earth’s system on the basis of GRACE satellite data, with application to Greenland

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission measures the Earth’s gravity field since March 2002. We propose a new filtering procedure for post-processing GRACE-based monthly gravity field solutions provided in the form of spherical harmonic coefficients. The procedure is tuned for the optimal estimation of linear trends...

Estimating the rates of mass change, ice volume change and snow volume change in Greenland from ICESat and GRACE data

The focus of this paper is on the quantification of ongoing mass and volume changes over the Greenland ice sheet. For that purpose, we used elevation changes derived from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimetry mission and monthly variations of the Earth’s gravity field as observed by the Gravity Recovery and...