Although the global mean sea-level budget for the20th century can now be closed, the understanding of sealevelchange on a regional scale is still limited. In this studywe compare observations from tide gauges to regional patternsfrom various contributions to sea-level change to seehow much of the regional measurements can be explained.Processes that are included are land ice mass changes andterrestrial storage changes with associated gravitational, rotationaland deformational effects, steric/dynamic changes,atmospheric pressure loading and glacial isostatic adjustment(GIA). The study focuses on the mean linear trend of regionalsea-level rise between 1961 and 2003. It is found that on aregional level the explained variance of the observed trendis 0.87 with a regression coefficient of 1.07. The observationsand models overlap within the 1 uncertainty range inall regions. The main processes explaining the variability inthe observations appear to be the steric/dynamic componentand the GIA. Local observations prove to be more difficultto explain because they show larger spatial variations, andtherefore require more information on small-scale processes.
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