Abstract/Summary

Although global mean sea-level rise since 1900 and regional mean sea-level change since the 1960s have been accounted for in terms of the sum of contributions, the same budget closure has not been achieved for local relative sea-level change from a global network of tide gauges. To address this, we combine new estimates of sterodynamic sea-level change (SDSL; including ocean dynamics), glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), change in land ice mass and terrestrial water storage, and other local vertical land motion. We find that the observed trends over 1958-2015 at all 272 tide gauges distributed worldwide agree with the sum of contributions (within 90% confidence estimates), with similar mean trend (1.1 mm yr-1) and comparable spatial variability (standard deviation of 2.0 and 1.9 mm yr-1 respectively). SDSL is the dominant contribution to both local observed mean trend and spatial variability, except at locations close to former ice-sheets, where GIA dominates.