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Importance of salinity measurements in the heat storage estimation from TOPEX/POSEIDON
Author(s) -
Sato Olga T.,
Polito Paulo S.,
Liu W. Timothy
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl011003
Subject(s) - altimeter , salinity , temperature salinity diagrams , sea surface height , environmental science , geology , satellite , in situ , climatology , atmospheric sciences , geodesy , meteorology , oceanography , physics , aerospace engineering , engineering
Sea surface height anomalies from satellite altimeter data are used to estimate heat storage. Since variability in sea surface height is mostly due to expansion and contraction of the water column it can be correlated with variations in the heat and salt content. Therefore, estimation of heat storage from altimeter data, when compared to in situ estimates, requires corrections for the haline effect. Three sites with a nearly continuous time series of temperature and salinity profiles simultaneous with TOPEX/POSEIDON data are studied: HOT, CalCOFI and Hydrostation “S”. Haline corrections based on in situ and climatological salinity measurements are contrasted. For the studied regions, the haline corrections based on climatology provide equivalent or worse results than not applying a correction at all. The use of in situ salinity estimates decreased the differences between the heat storage estimates (up to 17 × 10 7 J m −2 ) and significantly improved their correlation (up to 0.18).