Satellite animation of
ocean salinity made using one of the same satellites used to create the new estimates of ocean acidification.
Not exact matches
Consistent with how I was reading things, pleasantly — barring some cautious hedging I'd
made, based on the possibility that
salinity could reflect mass changes, either when fresh water was added to the
ocean via glacial melt or impoundment decreases (
ocean mass increase) or via increased evaporation rates (
ocean mass decrease).
The principal scientific objective is to
make global SSS measurements over the ice - free
oceans with 150 - km spatial resolution, and to achieve a measurement error less than 0.2 (PSS - 78 [practical
salinity scale of 1978]-RRB- on a 30 - day time scale, taking into account all sensors and geophysical random errors and biases.
Salinity is indeed a key indicator of the strength of the hydrologic cycle because it tracks the differences created by varying evaporation and precipitation, runoff, and ice processes.
The retreat of glaciers and shrinking of the Greenland ice sheet in the Arctic, for example, is predicted to cause significant sea - level rise, changes in the
salinity of our
oceans, and altered feedback loops that will
make the Arctic warm up even faster.
To conduct the research, a team of scientists led by John Fasullo of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, combined data from three sources: NASA's GRACE satellites, which
make detailed measurements of Earth's gravitational field, enabling scientists to monitor changes in the mass of continents; the Argo global array of 3,000 free - drifting floats, which measure the temperature and
salinity of the upper layers of the
oceans; and satellite - based altimeters that are continuously calibrated against a network of tide gauges.
At the workshop, advances in understanding the
ocean's water cycle,
made possible by innovations in the
salinity observing system that recently began providing near - instantaneous snapshots of the global
salinity field, were reported.
Aquarius will map the open
ocean once every seven days for at least three years, allowing scientists to
make the first global maps of
salinity in the surface layer.
This
ocean - to - land moisture transport leaves an imprint on sea surface
salinity,
making this «nature's rain gauge» to measure the variations of the water cycle.