Ocean bottom pressure gradients deduced from the satellite gravity mission Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) were previously shown to provide barotropic transport variations of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) with up to monthly resolution. Here, bottom pressure distributions from GRACE with monthly (GFZ RL04) and higher temporal resolution (CNES/GRGS with 10 days, ITG‐GRACE2010 with daily resolution) are evaluated over the ACC area. Even on time scales shorter than 10 days, correlations with in situ bottom pressure records frequently exceed 0.6 with positive explained variances, giving evidence that high‐frequency nontidal ocean mass variability is captured by the daily ITG‐GRACE2010 solutions not already included in the applied background models. Bottom pressure is subsequently taken to calculate the barotropic component of the ACC transport variability across Drake Passage. For periods longer than 30 days, transport shows high correlations between 0.4 and 0.5 with several tide gauge records along the coast of Antarctica. Still significant correlations around 0.25 are obtained even for variability with periods shorter than 10 days. Since transport variations are predominantly affected by time‐variable surface winds, GRACE‐based transports are contrasted against an atmospheric index of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which represents the Southern Hemispheric wind variability. Correlations between the SAM and GRACE‐based transports are consistently higher than correlations between any of the available sea level records in all frequency bands considered, indicating that GRACE is indeed able to accurately observe a hemispherically consistent pattern of bottom pressure (and hence ACC transport) variability that is otherwise at least partially masked in tide gauge records due to local weather effects, sea ice presence and steric signals.

International audienceWe re-evaluate the Greenland mass balance for the recent period using low-pass Independent Component Analysis (ICA) post-processing of the Level-2 GRACE data (2002-2010) from different official providers (UTCSR, JPL, GFZ) and confirm the present important ice mass loss in the range of −70 and −90 Gt/y of this ice sheet, due to negative contributions of the glaciers on the east coast. We highlight the high interannual variability of mass variations of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), especially the recent deceleration of ice loss in 2009-2010, once seasonal cycles are robustly removed by Seasonal Trend Loess (STL) decomposition. Interannual variability leads to varying trend estimates depending on the considered time span. Correction of post-glacial rebound effects on ice mass trend estimates represents no more than 8 Gt/y over the whole ice sheet. We also investigate possible climatic causes that can explain these ice mass interannual variations, as strong correlations between GRACE-based mass balance and atmosphere/ocean parallels are established: (1) changes in snow accumulation, and (2) the influence of inputs of warm ocean water that periodically accelerate the calving of glaciers in coastal regions and, feed-back effects of coastal water cooling by fresh currents from glaciers melting. These results suggest that the Greenland mass balance is driven by coastal sea surface temperature at time scales shorter than accumulation