Description: Gravitationally consistent solutions of the Sea Level Equation from leakage‐corrected monthly‐mean GFZ RL06 Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow‐On (GRACE‐FO) Stokes coefficients reveal that barystatic sea level averaged over the whole global ocean was rising by 1.72 mm a−1 during the period April 2002 until August 2016. This rate refers to a truely global ocean averaging domain that includes all polar and semienclosed seas. The result corresponds to 2.02 mm a−1 mean barystatic sea level rise in the open ocean with a 1,000 km coastal buffer zone as obtained from a direct spatial integration of monthly GRACE data. The bias of +0.3 mm a−1 is caused by below‐average barystatic sea level rise in close proximity to coastal mass losses induced by the smaller gravitational attraction of the remaining continental ice and water masses. Alternative spherical harmonics solutions from CSR, JPL, and TU Graz reveal open‐ocean rates between 1.94 and 2.08 mm a−1, thereby demonstrating that systematic differences among the processing centers are much reduced in the latest release. We introduce in this paper a new method to approximate spatial leakage from the differences of two differently filtered global gravity fields. A globally constant and time‐invariant scale factor required to obtain full leakage from those filter differences is found to be 3.9 for GFZ RL06 when filtered with DDK3, and lies between 3.9 and 4.4 for other processing centers. Spatial leakage is estimated for every month in terms of global grids, thereby providing also valuable information of intrabasin leakage that is potentially relevant for hydrologic and hydrometeorological applications.

Description: Ocean tide loading (OTL) and ocean tide dynamics (OTD) are known to be affected by Earth's internal structures, with the latter being affected by the self-attraction and loading (SAL) potential. Combining the 3D earth models Lyon and LITHO1.0, we construct a hybrid model to quantify the coupled effect of sediments, oceanic and continental lithosphere, and anelastic upper mantle on OTL and OTD. Compared to PREM, this more realistic 3D model produces significantly larger vertical OTL displacement by up to 3.9, 2.6, and 0.1 mm for the M2, K1, and Mf OTL, respectively. Moreover, it shows a smaller vector difference of 0.1 mm and a smaller amplitude difference of 0.2 mm than PREM with OTL observations at 663 Global Navigation Satellite System stations, a confirmation of the cumulative effect due to these earth features. On the other hand, we find a resonant impact of wider extent and larger magnitude on OTD, especially for the M2 and K1 tides. Specifically, this impact is concentrated in the ranges 0–6 mm and 0–1.5 mm for M2 and K1, respectively, which is considerably larger than the impact on SAL (mostly in the ranges 0–2 mm and 0–1.0 mm, respectively). Since the effect on vertical displacement is at a similar level compared to the accuracy of modern data-constrained ocean tide models that require correction of the geocentric tide by loading induced vertical displacements, we regard its consideration to be potentially beneficial in OTD modeling. Key Points The effects of 3D sediments, lithosphere, upper mantle (anelastic) on ocean tide loading and ocean tide dynamics have been studied here The inclusion of these 3D earth features leads to an improvement of predicted vertical M2 displacements as confirmed with Global Navigation Satellite System observations The potential impact of changes in displacement on tidal systems is amplified, especially for semidiurnal tides (e.g., 6 mm for M2)

Description: Global coupled climate models are in continuous need for evaluation against independent observations to reveal systematic model deficits and uncertainties. Changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) as measured by satellite gravimetry missions GRACE and GRACE-FO provide valuable information on wetting and drying trends over the continents. Challenges arising from a comparison of observed and modelled water storage trends are related to gravity observations including non-water related variations such as, for example, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Therefore, correcting secular changes in the Earth's gravity field caused by ongoing GIA is important for the monitoring of long-term changes in terrestrial water from GRACE in particular in former ice-covered regions. By utilizing a new ensemble of 56 individual realizations of GIA signals based on perturbations of mantle viscosities and ice history, we find that many of those alternative GIA corrections change the direction of GRACE-derived water storage trends, for example, from gaining mass into drying conditions, in particular in Eastern Canada. The change in the sign of the TWS trends subsequently impacts the conclusions drawn from using GRACE as observational basis for the evaluation of climate models as it influences the dis-/agreement between observed and modelled wetting/drying trends. A modified GIA correction, a combined GRACE/GRACE-FO data record extending over two decades, and a new generation of climate model experiments leads to substantially larger continental areas where wetting/drying trends currently observed by satellite missions coincide with long-term predictions obtained from climate model experiments.