Hi all,
It turns out that melting ice and thermal expansion are not the only important factors for sea level change; the amount of rain over land vs. ocean also can be.
In this case, extreme rains over Australia during 2010-2011 pooled at the center of the continent and caused global sea level to drop (temporarily). For more info on this, check out the story on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/20/213577129/how-extreme-australian-rains-made-global-sea-levels-drop?ft=1&f=1025
Here's a link to the original article by Fasullo et al. in Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required - access this from a computer logged onto the Arizona library system and you should be able to get it):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50834/abstract
Enjoy!
Sarah
Thanks for posting this Sarah! The US National Science Foundation also posted a new story about this paper:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128842&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
And, an interesting side point is that Australia had been in extreme drought for much of the decade before this - many regions still are. One of the expected results of global warming is greater variability (+ and -) in the hydrological cycle.....