Rising sea level is a threat to people living in and near coastal regions. Therefore, accurately predicting and understanding changes in sea level are critical, especially in the face of climate change. However, because of a lack of knowledge regarding the mechanisms that govern the water exchange between the land and the ocean, the fraction of global total water storage on land that contributes to changes in sea level remains unclear. Between 2003 and 2011, mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets continuously increased, whereas the rate of sea level rise decreased to 2.4 mm/year (from approximately 3.3 mm/year between 1993 and 2002). Climate-driven changes in land water storage have been suggested to contribute to this decrease in the rate of sea level rise, but direct observations have not been available to verify this speculation. In a recent study, we found that while the ice sheets and mountain glaciers continue melting, changes in climate between 2003 and 2014 have caused continental land areas such as soils, lakes, and groundwater aquifers to store extra water (approximately 3.2 trillion tons). This storage temporarily decreased the rate of sea level rise by approximately 20% and can be considered a “climate-driven sea level change”. Because of the lack of observations, the effects of climate-driven sea level rise have not been given sufficient attention in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sea level budgets. Recent satellite measurements collected during a time-variable gravity mission, GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, launched in 2002), have enabled us to estimate the water storage changes at the continental scale and to quantify climate-driven sea level rise. Our results show that from 2003 to 2014, climate-driven land water storage was of opposite sign and similar magnitude as ice losses from glaciers and ice sheets, and was nearly twice as large as mass losses from direct human-driven changes (groundwater withdrawal and dams) in land water storage. Between 2002 and 2014, climate variability resulted in an additional 3200 ± 900 gigatons of water storage on land. This gain partially offset water losses from ice sheets, glaciers, and groundwater pumping and slowed the rate of sea level rise by 0.71 ± 0.20 mm per year. However, such contributions from land water storage are not permanent—they are a form of climate variability and may change in the future. Thus, land-based hydrology has masked the true rate of sea level rise and may also exaggerate the rate of sea level rise in the future. Our results show that climate-driven changes in land water storage are now observable on a global scale, and these changes are large and necessary for the closure of decadal-scale sea level budgets. The findings improve upon previous estimates by accounting for feedback between the land, ocean, and atmosphere, and highlight the importance of the land-hydrological cycle and its interactions with climate when assigning contributions to changes in sea level. Reference J. T. Reager, A. S. Gardner, J. S. Famiglietti, D. N. Wiese, A. Eicker, M.-H. Lo. A decade of sea level rise slowed by climate-driven hydrology. Science, 2016 DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8386 Assistant Professor Min-Hui Lo Department of Atmospheric Sciences mlo@as.ntu.edu.tw Reference John T. Reager, Alex S. Gardner, James S. Famiglietti, David N. Wiese, Annette Eicker, Min-Hui Lo. (2016) A decade of sea level rise slowed by climate-driven hydrology. Science, 351(6274), 699-703. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8386 Assistant Professor Min-Hui Lo Department of Atmospheric Sciences mlo@as.ntu.edu.tw