Anomalies Thermosteric and Halosteric Contributions to Sea Level Variation

Abstract:

Sea level anomaly (SLA) is an important indicator of changes in the Earth's climate system because the oceans have great heat storage capacity. The sea level variation is due to combination of thermosteric and halosteric effects. These two effects play significant roles in the annual cycle of the SLA and maintain the thermohaline circulation. Previous studies only considered the thermosteric effect. The main goal of this study was to determine the regions of the global ocean where the variability induced by halosteric effect is equal or higher than that induced by thermosteric effect. We used temperature and salinity data from World Ocean Atlas 2013 (WOA13) with spatial resolution of 1°x1° during the period of 1955 to 2012 to calculate the coefficient of thermal expansion (α), haline contraction (β) and to estimate their contributions to the SLA variation in the global ocean. Our results showed that the thermosteric effect is dominant in the tropical and subtropical regions due to high insolation throughout the year. However, in polar regions, North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans the halosteric effect was the main contributor to SLA variation. In polar regions, the effect occurs because of the lack in temperature variation and the fact that in this region the precipitation rate exceeds evaporation increasing the freshwater input. In the others, the mechanism is still unknown. The linear trend of thermosteric and halosteric components for 1955-2012 is 0.35mm/yr and 0.07mm/yr, respectively. This results shows that halosteric effect should be considered in the heat storage estimation from satellite data, in situ data and numerical modelling contrasting the previous approaches to SLA.