Via Judith Curry we learn that a new paper has been published that suggests that a large chunk of sea level rise may be down to the influence of the PDO.
Understanding and explaining the trend in GMSL has important implications for future projections of sea level rise. While measurements from satellite altimetry have provided accurate estimates of GMSL, the modern altimetry record has only now reached twenty years in length, making it difficult to assess the contribution of decadal to multi-decadal climate signals to the global trend. Here, we use a sea level reconstruction to study the twenty-year trends in sea level since 1950. In particular, we show that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) contributes significantly to the twenty-year trends in GMSL. We estimate the PDO contribution to the GMSL trend over the past twenty years to be approximately 0.49 ± 0.25 mm/year, and find that removing the PDO contribution reduces the acceleration in GMSL estimated over the past sixty years.