Influence of ocean model horizontal resolution on the representation of global annual‐to‐multidecadal coastal sea level variability

Globally, in HR simulations, intrinsic variability comprises from zero to over 80% of coastal sea level variance. Outside of eddy‐rich regions, simulated coastal sea level variability is generally damped relative to observations. We hypothesize that weak coastal variability is related to large‐scale, remotely forced, variability; in both HR and LR, tropical sea level variance is underestimated by 50% relative to satellite altimetric observations.

Similar coastal dynamical regimes (e.g., attached western boundary currents) exhibit a consistent sensitivity to horizontal resolution, suggesting that these findings are generalizable to regions with limited coastal observations.