MacIntosh C R, Merchant C J, von Schuckmann K
1Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, PO Box 243, Reading, RG6 6BB UK.
2National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB UK.
Surv Geophys. 2017;38(1):59-87. doi: 10.1007/s10712-016-9387-x. Epub 2016 Oct 17.
This article presents a review of current practice in estimating steric sea level change, focussed on the treatment of uncertainty. Steric sea level change is the contribution to the change in sea level arising from the dependence of density on temperature and salinity. It is a significant component of sea level rise and a reflection of changing ocean heat content. However, tracking these steric changes still remains a significant challenge for the scientific community. We review the importance of understanding the uncertainty in estimates of steric sea level change. Relevant concepts of uncertainty are discussed and illustrated with the example of observational uncertainty propagation from a single profile of temperature and salinity measurements to steric height. We summarise and discuss the recent literature on methodologies and techniques used to estimate steric sea level in the context of the treatment of uncertainty. Our conclusions are that progress in quantifying steric sea level uncertainty will benefit from: greater clarity and transparency in published discussions of uncertainty, including exploitation of international standards for quantifying and expressing uncertainty in measurement; and the development of community "recipes" for quantifying the error covariances in observations and from sparse sampling and for estimating and propagating uncertainty across spatio-temporal scales.
本文对当前估算比容海平面变化的实践进行了综述，重点关注不确定性的处理。比容海平面变化是指由于密度对温度和盐度的依赖而导致的海平面变化的贡献。它是海平面上升的一个重要组成部分，也是海洋热含量变化的一种反映。然而，追踪这些比容变化对科学界来说仍然是一项重大挑战。我们回顾了理解比容海平面变化估算中不确定性的重要性。讨论了不确定性的相关概念，并以从单个温度和盐度测量剖面到比容高度的观测不确定性传播为例进行了说明。我们总结并讨论了近期关于在不确定性处理背景下估算比容海平面的方法和技术的文献。我们的结论是，在量化比容海平面不确定性方面取得进展将受益于：在已发表的不确定性讨论中更加清晰和透明，包括采用国际标准来量化和表达测量中的不确定性；以及制定社区“方法”，用于量化观测中的误差协方差以及稀疏采样中的误差协方差，并用于跨时空尺度估算和传播不确定性。
