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Gravitationally consistent solutions of the Sea Level Equation from leakage‐corrected monthly‐mean GFZ RL06 Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow‐On (GRACE‐FO) Stokes coefficients reveal that barystatic sea level averaged over the whole global ocean was rising by 1.72 mm a−1 during the period April 2002 until August 2016. This rate refers to a truely global ocean averaging domain that includes all polar and semienclosed seas. The result corresponds to 2.02 mm a−1 mean barystatic sea level rise in the open ocean with a 1,000 km coastal buffer zone as obtained from a direct spatial integration of monthly GRACE data. The bias of +0.3 mm a−1 is caused by below‐average barystatic sea level rise in close proximity to coastal mass losses induced by the smaller gravitational attraction of the remaining continental ice and water masses. Alternative spherical harmonics solutions from CSR, JPL, and TU Graz reveal open‐ocean rates between 1.94 and 2.08 mm a−1, thereby demonstrating that systematic differences among the processing centers are much reduced in the latest release. We introduce in this paper a new method to approximate spatial leakage from the differences of two differently filtered global gravity fields. A globally constant and time‐invariant scale factor required to obtain full leakage from those filter differences is found to be 3.9 for GFZ RL06 when filtered with DDK3, and lies between 3.9 and 4.4 for other processing centers. Spatial leakage is estimated for every month in terms of global grids, thereby providing also valuable information of intrabasin leakage that is potentially relevant for hydrologic and hydrometeorological applications. Plain Language Summary: Satellite gravimetry as realized with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow‐On (GRACE‐FO) missions is measuring tiny variations in the Earth's gravity field that are directly caused by divergent horizontal mass transports such as the melting of ice sheets and the corresponding discharge of melt water into the ocean basins. Between April 2002 and August 2016, this mass inflow caused sea level to rise by 1.72 mm each year as quantified from the latest GRACE reprocessing performed at our institute. The indirect observation principle of GRACE limits the spatial resolution so that highly localized mass loss signals are smeared out into the larger surrounding area, and possibly even from land into the ocean. We propose here a new method to quantify this so‐called spatial leakage from the difference of gravity fields smoothed with slightly different spatial filters. A scale factor is obtained from exploiting the availability of two independent methods to estimate the mass component of sea level rise: The first method spatially integrates over the global gravity fields in all regions away from the coasts, and the second method utilizes a (leakage‐corrected) mass distribution over the continents to calculate the gravitationally consistent distribution of water masses in all ocean basins. We estimate this scale factor as 3.9. Key Points: Mean barystatic sea level rise is biased high by 0.3 mm a−1 when estimated with a 1,000 km coastal buffer zoneFractional spatial leakage in monthly GRACE gravity fields is quantified with two differently strong DDK filtersFractional leakage is scaled by a factor of 3.9 to make results from the Sea Level Equation consistent with open‐ocean integrations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GRACE‐FO satellites launched in May 2018 are able to quantify the water mass deficit in Central Europe during the two consecutive summer droughts of 2018 and 2019. Relative to the long‐term climatology, the water mass deficits were −112 ± 10.5 Gt in 2018 and −145 ± 12 Gt in 2019. These deficits are 73% and 94% of the mean amplitude of seasonal water storage variations, which is so severe that a recovery cannot be expected within 1 year. The water deficits in 2018 and 2019 are the largest in the whole GRACE and GRACE‐FO time span. Globally, the data do not show an offset between the two missions, which proves the successful continuation of GRACE by GRACE‐FO and thus the reliability of the observed extreme events in Central Europe. This allows for a joint assessment of the four Central European droughts in 2003, 2015, 2018, and 2019 in terms of total water storage deficits. Plain Language Summary: During the droughts of 2018 and 2019, Central Europe had a water deficit of about 112 and 145 Gt compared to an average year. As the water storage differences between winter and summer is about 150 Gt, the drought‐related deficit amounts to 73% and 94% of these annual variations. These mass variations can be observed with the twin satellite missions GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, 2002–2017) and its successor GRACE Follow‐On (launched May 2018). With the satellite observations, the change in the total water storage can be estimated, including ground water, soil water content, and surface waters such as lakes and rivers. During the 21st century, Central Europe experienced four major droughts in 2003, 2015, 2018, and 2019, and we document the severity of the more recent droughts with respect to earlier events. We also find no systematic offset between the GRACE and GRACE‐FO observations, so that the available satellite gravity record extends now over 18 years already. Key Points: GRACE‐FO quantifies continental water mass anomalies in continuation of the GRACE mission (2002–2017)GRACE‐FO observes a water storage deficit of 112 and 145 Gt in 2018 and 2019 in Central Europe relative to the average conditionsThese deficits amount to 73% and 94% of the mean amplitude of seasonal water storage variations, respectively [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]