The sea surface features high variability on a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. The animation below show a few results of investigations performed to describe the kinematics of the sea surface.

	Movie - Mean seasonal sea level variation [mm] The heating and expansion of the upper layer water depends on the season: In late summer the sea level on the northern hemisphere is some 1 - 2 dm above mean sea level. The southern hemisphere shows the same effect with a delay of six month. In the equatorial region this hemispheric oscillation is disturbed by strong currents.
	Movie - Residual sea level variations [mm] covering the period October 1992 .. October 2005 Small scale residual sea level variations become clearly visible after seasonal and secular variations have been removed. Intensive Eddy formation can be observed in the western boundary currents (Gulf stream, Kuroshio, Alghuas stream). Along the equator Eddies are moving westwards. This animation also shows the strong El-Nino effect which took place in December 1997.
	This animation shows the global effects of the most significant M2 Tidal Constituent with a period of about 12.4 hours caused by the Moon.
	This animation shows the global effects of the K1 Tidal Constituent with a period of 23.9 hours.
	This movie shows ARGO Floaters in Jason-1 SLA data.
	This movie shows the segmentation and tracking of eddies in the kuroshio current.