A novel reconstruction of sea level sources from satellite altimetry

The amount of water in the oceans is never constant due to its continuous exchange with the continents, where freshwater is stored in, for example, ice sheets, glaciers and groundwater systems. Direct observations of those reservoirs are sparse in both space and time, although they are crucial to understand the impact of climate change on the global water cycle and on sea level. Remarkably, freshwater fluxes redistribute over the oceans following very specific patters, known as sea-level fingerprints. This project will analyse satellite observations to detect those patterns and provide original estimates of their continental sources.