Interactive tools for global sustainability and Earth systems: Sea level change and temperature

Understanding global change is important for creating a sustainable environment, and is a key interest of the Earth systems science community. Here we present an educational tutorial that explores the relationship between sea level and global temperature using modern-day records and time-series analysis and the Java-DSP Earth Systems Edition (J-DSP/ESE) application. The objectives of the tutorial are to apply pre-processing steps based on signal type, perform spectral analysis and identify significant frequencies, perform coherency and cross-phase analysis between two records, and arrive at an informed understanding about the relationship between sea level and global temperature change. Preliminary student assessment indicates that students were comfortable using J-DSP/ESE, and quickly understood the signal processing concepts. The analysis reveals correlation between sea level variations and global temperature at inter-annual timescales related to the El Niño climatological phenomenon. In sum, the tutorial improved students´ understanding of basic factors that influence global sustainability and habitability.