Arctic Ocean Level Trends

The Arctic plays a significant role in the Earth’s climate system and the purpose of this article is to analyze peculiarities of variability of the Arctic Ocean level and to compare it with that of the World Ocean level . According to altimetry data for the period of 1993– 2018 an estimate of the World Ocean level trend of 3.15 ± 0.2 mm/year with a 68 % confidence interval was obtained. Whereas an increase in the linear trend of 0.8 mm / year for the period 2004–2015 should be noted in comparison with 1993–2004. Estimation of the linear trend of the World Ocean barystatic level is 2.13 ± 0.12 mm/year with a 68 % confidence interval for the period 2002–2018, and the steric level trend is 1.02 mm/year, which is consistent with estimates of other authors obtained by independent methods. The linear trends of the Arctic Ocean barystatic level are calculated for the period 2002–2015 and compared with estimates of the linear trend of the World Ocean level and its steric component. The processes of variability of the barystatic level in the Norwegian, Barents and Arctic seas of Russia are mainly seasonal and intra-seasonal in nature, the contribution of interannual variability is less than 20–30 %; in the East Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, the contribution of interannual variability reaches 50 %; processes in the region of Greenland are characterized mainly by interannual variability, which makes 70– 90 % of the contribution to the total variance of the barystatic level.