Steric oscillations greatly contribute to the change of seasonal sea-level variation, and determine many peculiarities on the synoptic and inter-annual variability ranges as well as affect climatic trends. The review of available approaches to estimate steric levels is given. The rates of change of the steric sea-level variation are presented for the Kuril area in Pacific according to calculation of hydrodynamic motion and mass continuity equations. Data set GDEM of monthly-averaged temperatures and salinities on standard depths at the nodes of regular grid is used. At 24 points in the open Pacific ocean the values of the steric sea-level oscillations and their rates of change as well as coefficients of pair-correlation and cross-correlation with the sea surface temperature and respective time lags are obtained. The sea surface temperature is shown to be a good predictor for forecasting steric sea-level oscillations, including operative forecasts by IR data, taking into account that steric sea-level oscillations are lagged regarding the sea surface temperature change.