Changes in the air-sea fluxes of heat and freshwater are
expected as a result of anthropogenic climate change. However,
these changes are likely to be small and very difficult to detect
with currently available surface flux datasets. Several studies
have analysed the increase in observed ocean heat content over the
past 50 years and place a limit of about 0.5 W m-2 on
the increase in surface heat flux to the ocean over this time
period both globally and for the North Atlantic. Given the high
level of uncertainty in available flux datasets no formal attempt
has yet been made to detect this signal. A similar situation holds
for the surface freshwater flux, for which there are additional
problems arising from the difficulty in obtaining reliable long
term estimates of precipitation. Some progress towards detecting
changes in the hydrological cycle has been made using salinity as
an integral measure of variations in the net evaporation.
Obtaining reliable predictions of future changes in the air-sea
heat and freshwater fluxes in the UK marine environment is
difficult as the anthropogenic signal is small and may be strongly
influenced by changes due to natural variability in the climate
system.
