The statistical characteristics of altimetric sea level anomaly time series

Abstract

This paper provides a review on statistical properties of sea level fluctuations, both in global and regional scales. Accurate information on up-to-date dynamics of sea level variability can be obtained from satellite altimetry, in particular from TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 missions. A global-scale analysis is based on a single time series, however a regional-scale investigation employs multiple data sets corresponding to dissimilar geographic locations. The statistical characteristics of long-, medium-, and short-term components of sea level fluctuations computed from TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 altimetric measurements are discussed. The new finding of this paper is that a few statistical measures of sea level variability in central equatorial Pacific reveal similar spatial patterns. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.