Two models for the climate change related development of sea levels in theNorth Sea - a comparison

Two models of the North Sea are compared with respect to their performance in the assessment of sea level changes in a changing climate: the OPYC mode l, originally designed as a global ocean model and run in a regional versio n, and the HAMSOM, which was built as a shelf sea model and applied to an e xtended region in a simplified version. Both models agree very well in thei r hindcast skill as measured by correlation and explained variance. The rea ction of both models to the '2 x CO2' and 'control' runs of the time slice experiments of the DKRZ (German Climate Computing Center) is also very simi lar and indicates an increase of up to 30 cm of winter mean sea levels and no significant (compared with the variability in the past) impact an the in tra-monthly 90 % quantiles. It is concluded that sea level is a rather robu st parameter that could still be assessed with some confidence if both mode ls were simplified further.