IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON SALINITY
Christine Gommenginger
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
Supporting Evidence
The ICES Reports on Ocean Climate provide a view of environmental conditions in the North Atlantic by summarising results from long-term observations at standard sections and stations. The IROC (formerly known as the ICES Annual Ocean Climate Status Summary) is an annual publication by the ICES Working Group on Oceanic Hydrography (ICES, 2006).
The Inter-Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology (IACMST) published a comprehensive report in 2004 on the status of various ocean parameters, including salinity, in UK Marine Waters (IACMST, 2004). The IACMST report included a review of the findings of the ICES group up to 2004.
Summary of changes and trends in salinity for UK waters (extracted from IACMST, 2004)
- Atlantic waters and adjacent shelf areas had low winter and summer sea surface salinity (SSS) in the mid-late 1970s (associated with the passage of the Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA)), followed by three decades of large inter-annual variability.
- Salinity records from the Faroe-Shetland Channel and the Ellett Line indicate a recent trend to high salinity.
- There is no discernible trend in mean SSS in the English Channel from 1900 to the early 1980s.
- SSS averaged over the Irish Sea from 1950 to 2002 shows a decrease in both winter and summer.
Please acknowledge this document as: Gommenginger, C. (2006). Impacts of Climate Change on Ocean Salinity in Marine Climate Change Impacts Annual Report Card 2006 (Eds. Buckley, P.J, Dye, S.R. and Baxter, J.M), Online Summary Reports, MCCIP, Lowestoft, www.mccip.org.uk
References
Curry, R., Dickson, B. and Yashayaev, I. (2003) A change in the freshwater balance of the Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades. Nature , 426, 826-829.
Dickson, R. R., I. Yashayaev, J. Meincke, W. Turrell, S. Dye and J. Holfort, (2002) Rapid freshening of the deep North Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades. Nature, 416, 832-837.
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) (2006). The ICES Report on Ocean Climate 2005. ICES Cooperative Research Report No. 280, 47 pp. http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/ICES_WGOH/iroc.php
Inter-Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology (IACMST) report for UK Marine Waters 2004 - Marine Processes & Climate (2004).
http://www.oceannet.org/medag/reports/IACMST_reports/
Josey, S. A. and Marsh, R. (2005) Surface freshwater flux variability and recent freshening of the North Atlantic in the Eastern Subpolar Gyre, J. Geophys. Res., 110, C05008, doi:10.1029/2004JC002521.