I just stumbled upon the following sentence "Warming also causes sea level to rise, mainly (so far) due to the thermal expansion of the ocean and secondarily to melting of glaciers and ice caps" in a textbook [1]. Unfortunately, the textbook lacks references in this section (thus, I initially assumed this to be consensus information). I found this interesting and searched for more information on the factors affecting global sea-level rise.
I found some recent publication [2] which, however, gave a different impression: "the barystatic component dominates over the first half of the twentieth century, explaining more than 80% of total [global mean sea level] rise. The barystatic contribution is larger than the thermosteric contribution over most of the second half of the century too, except during the peak of dam construction in the 1970s. Glaciers are the largest contributor to sea-level rise over most of the twentieth century [...]"
Moreover, the article stated that "previous observation-based studies concluded that the [global mean sea level] budget for the whole twentieth century could not be closed within the estimated uncertainties."
Now, I wondered how much certainty/consensus there is about the relative contribution of thermal expansion and mass fluxes to global mean sea-level rise in the present and the recent past, what the relative contribution of these factors is, and what potential trends/predictions imply for future developments (I suppose thermal expansion and influx of glacial meltwater would appear at different locations and have different implications for water density and salt content, etc).
1. Chapin, F.S., Matson, P.A., Vitousek, P.M. (2011). Water and Energy Balance. In: Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9504-9_4
2. Frederikse, T., Landerer, F., Caron, L. et al. The causes of sea-level rise since 1900. Nature 584, 393–397 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2591-3
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