How does salinity impact year-to-year climate variability?

Ocean salinity may help us better understand and predict the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which causes year-to-year variations in global climate.

Research Summary

Understanding how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) responds to ocean surface salinity variability is important given expected increases in salinity variability with climate change and the intensifying hydrologic cycle. Using globally-coupled climate model experiments, this study demonstrates that sub-seasonal variations in surface salinity can strengthen ENSO events by increasing ocean subsurface stratification, indicating the importance of accurately simulating sub-seasonal variability for the tropical Pacific mean state and ENSO simulations. These findings underscore the need for high-resolution salinity measurements from observational campaigns and further modeling experiments to clarify the role of salinity in climate.

Invited Poster (American Geophysical Union, 2023)

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