Published in ERW, 9 Feb 2015
Changes in salinity could affect regional sea levels by roughly one-quarter as much as changes in temperature do, according to researchers in the US and Australia. The role of salinity is “substantially larger” than previously thought and should not be neglected in future studies of sea levels, the researchers say.
Salinity has a direct effect on sea levels as salt increases the density of water. Nonetheless, its role in long-term estimates of globally averaged sea-level rise has been largely ignored, says Paul Durack at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US, together with colleagues from there and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia. One reason, says Durack, is that many previous sea-level studies have focused on global average changes, and global salinity changes are very small. […]
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