Aim Movement of water from the land surface to the atmosphere (evapotranspiration, ET ) is the dominant output flux in the global terrestrial surface water budget. The partitioning of ET between soil evaporation ( E ) and plant transpiration ( T ) couples important ecological, hydrological and atmospheric processes. ET partitioning has been hypothesized to vary as a function of woody plant cover, yet a relationship between ET...

Sea level is one of the 50 Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) listed by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) in climate change monitoring. In the past two decades, sea level has been routinely measured from space using satellite altimetry techniques. In order to address a number of important scientific questions such as "Is sea level rise accelerating?", "Can we close the sea level budget?", "What are the causes of the r...