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Ocean climate change fingerprints attenuated by salt fingering?
Author(s) -
Johnson Gregory C.,
Kearney Kelly A.
Publication year - 2009
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 - 10.1029/2009gl040697
Subject(s) - salinity , stratification (seeds) , subtropics , temperature salinity diagrams , environmental science , climate change , climatology , oceanography , global warming , ocean dynamics , mixing (physics) , potential temperature , geology , atmospheric sciences , ocean current , ecology , seed dormancy , botany , germination , physics , quantum mechanics , dormancy , biology
Intensified double diffusive mixing may attenuate changes in ocean temperature and salinity patterns from global‐warming induced increases in the Earth's hydrological cycle. Increasingly fresher Antarctic Intermediate Water and saltier subtropical waters would tend to increase destabilizing vertical salinity stratification compared to the stabilizing temperature stratification. Destabilization would increase salinity (and temperature) fluxes through double‐diffusive salt fingering. These fluxes could in turn act to reduce widely recognized climate change fingerprints, potentially leading to underestimates of ocean changes in climate studies that do not account for double‐diffusive mixing. Data from a subtropical trans‐Indian Ocean survey occupied in 1987, 1995, 2002, and 2009 are used to investigate temperature‐salinity changes and to estimate the variations of double diffusive mixing driven by these changes.