Abstract. Sea level is one of the 50 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) listed by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) in climate change monitoring. In the past two decades, sea level has been routinely measured from space using satellite altimetry techniques. In order to address a number of important scientific questions such as "Is sea level rise accelerating?", "Can we close the sea level budget?", "What are the causes of the regional and interannual variability?", "Can we already detect the anthropogenic forcing signature and separate it from the internal/natural climate variability?", and "What are the coastal impacts of sea level rise?", the accuracy of altimetry-based sea level records at global and regional scales needs to be significantly improved. For example, the global mean and regional sea level trend uncertainty should become better than 0.3 and 0.5 mm year−1, respectively (currently 0.6 and 1–2 mm year−1). Similarly, interannual global mean sea level variations (currently uncertain to 2–3 mm) need to be monitored with better accuracy. In this paper, we present various data improvements achieved within the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) project on "Sea Level" during its first phase (2010–2013), using multi-mission satellite altimetry data over the 1993–2010 time span. In a first step, using a new processing system with dedicated algorithms and adapted data processing strategies, an improved set of sea level products has been produced. The main improvements include: reduction of orbit errors and wet/dry atmospheric correction errors, reduction of instrumental drifts and bias, intercalibration biases, intercalibration between missions and combination of the different sea level data sets, and an improvement of the reference mean sea surface. We also present preliminary independent validations of the SL_cci products, based on tide gauges comparison and a sea level budget closure approach, as well as comparisons with ocean reanalyses and climate model outputs.

Abstract. Satellite altimetry missions now provide more than 25 years of accurate, continuous and quasi-global measurements of sea level along the reference ground track of TOPEX/Poseidon. These measurements are used by different groups to build the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) record, an essential climate change indicator. Estimating a realistic uncertainty in the GMSL record is of crucial importance for climate studies, such as assessing precisely the current rate and acceleration of sea level, analysing the closure of the sea-level budget, understanding the causes of sea-level rise, detecting and attributing the response of sea level to anthropogenic activity, or calculating the Earth's energy imbalance. Previous authors have estimated the uncertainty in the GMSL trend over the period 1993–2014 by thoroughly analysing the error budget of the satellite altimeters and have shown that it amounts to ±0.5 mm yr−1 (90 % confidence level). In this study, we extend our previous results, providing a comprehensive description of the uncertainties in the satellite GMSL record. We analysed 25 years of satellite altimetry data and provided for the first time the error variance–covariance matrix for the GMSL record with a time resolution of 10 days. Three types of errors have been modelled (drifts, biases, noises) and combined together to derive a realistic estimate of the GMSL error variance–covariance matrix. From the latter, we derived a 90 % confidence envelope of the GMSL record on a 10 d basis. Then we used a least squared approach and the error variance–covariance matrix to assess the GMSL trend and acceleration uncertainties over any 5-year time periods and longer in between October 1992 and December 2017. Over 1993–2017, we have found a GMSL trend of 3.35±0.4 mm yr−1 within a 90 % confidence level (CL) and a GMSL acceleration of 0.12±0.07 mm yr−2 (90 % CL). This is in agreement (within error bars) with previous studies. The full GMSL error variance–covariance matrix is freely available online: https://doi.org/10.17882/58344 (Ablain et al., 2018).

To promote the advancement of novel observation techniques that may lead to new sources of information to help better understand the hydrological cycle, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) established the Measurements and Observations in the XXI century (MOXXI) Working Group in July 2013. The group comprises a growing community of techenthusiastic hydrologists that design and develop their own sensing systems, adopt a multidisciplinary perspective in tackling complex observations, often use low-cost equipment intended for other applications to build innovative sensors, or perform opportunistic measurements. This paper states the objectives of the group and reviews major advances carried out by MOXXI members toward the advancement of hydrological sciences. Challenges and opportunities are outlined to provide strategic guidance for advancement of measurement, and thus discovery.

Abstract. Sea level is a very sensitive index of climate change since it integrates the impacts of ocean warming and ice mass loss from glaciers and the ice sheets. Sea level has been listed as an essential climate variable (ECV) by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). During the past 25 years, the sea level ECV has been measured from space by different altimetry missions that have provided global and regional observations of sea level variations. As part of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) program of the European Space Agency (ESA) (established in 2010), the Sea Level project (SL_cci) aimed to provide an accurate and homogeneous long-term satellite-based sea level record. At the end of the first phase of the project (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013), an initial version (v1.1) of the sea level ECV was made available to users . During the second phase of the project (2014-2017), improved altimeter standards were selected to produce new sea level products (called SL_cci v2.0) based on nine altimeter missions for the period 1993-2015 (https://doi.org/10.5270/esa-sea_level_cci-1993_2015-v_2.0-201612; Legeais and the ESA SL_cci team, 2016c). Corresponding orbit solutions, geophysical corrections and altimeter standards used in this v2.0 dataset are described in detail in Quartly et al. (2017). The present paper focuses on the description of the SL_cci v2.0 ECV and associated uncertainty and discusses how it has been validated. Various approaches have been used for the quality assessment such as internal validation, comparisons with sea level records from other groups and with in situ measurements, sea level budget closure analyses and comparisons with model outputs. Compared with the previous version of the sea level ECV, we show that use of improved geophysical corrections, careful bias reduction between missions and inclusion of new altimeter missions lead to improved sea level products with reduced uncertainties on different spatial and temporal scales. However, there is still room for improvementPublished by Copernicus Publications. 282J.-F. Legeais et al.: An improved and homogeneous altimeter sea level record from the ESA since the uncertainties remain larger than the GCOS requirements (GCOS, 2011). Perspectives on subsequent evolution are also discussed.

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