Meetings: Documents

Ocean Surface Water Exchange as a Constraint to Surface Salinity Measurements
[26-Feb-2014] Xie, X. and Liu, W.T.
Presented at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting
We have derived ocean surface water exchanges from satellite data, both as divergence of integrated water transport in the atmosphere and as the difference between evaporation and precipitation. The surface water flux should balance the change of salinity storage and the salinity advection. These two terms in the upper ocean have also been estimated using surface salinity from Aquarius and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), and from interpolated Argo data. The differences of surface salinity measurements as reflected in the two terms are examined by comparing with the surface water flux. The sum of salinity storage change and salinity advection calculated from both Aquarius and SMOS salinity, using ocean surface current data from the Ocean Surface Current Analysis Real-time (OSCAR), show better agreement with the surface water flux in the Pacific intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). In the midlatitude frontal regions such as Kuroshio Extension, discrepancies among those terms from Aquarius, SMOS, Argo are significant.