(In sailors’ parlance, an “old salt” is some fool like myself who has spent a good chunk of their life at sea …)
It seems that climate alarmists have a new focus—oceanic salinity. From the Florida Times-Union I find:
Researchers, including in Jacksonville, warn of perilous salinity changes in warming oceans
Matt Soergel, Florida Times-Union
Fri, July 28, 2023 at 12:32 PM PDT
Cliff Ross, University of North Florida marine biologist and chairman of the Biology Department, explores the Dry Tortugas west of Key West. He is part of an international team of researchers who just released a paper on changing salinity levels in the ocean as an effect of rapid climate change.
Cliff Ross notes that in stories and studies on human-caused climate change, most of the emphasis is on a rapidly warming world that is expected to only get hotter and hotter.
That’s fair enough, he says — and that’s taken on increased urgency as intense heat waves hammer various parts of the globe this summer, a phenomenon scientists are linking to climate change.
But Ross, a marine biologist who’s head of the Biology Department at the University of North Florida and part of an international research team, wants to bring attention to another effect of a hotter Earth — changing salinity levels in the world’s oceans, which could themselves bring about big changes across the planet.
It’s a complex issue, but those changing salinity levels could have major impacts on the world’s economy, on creatures that live in the ocean and on the residents of coastal areas — Florida certainly included.
So in theory, changing salinity levels “could” bring about big changes, and it “could” have major impacts?
Unimpressed by the could-ness, I went to see the underlying study in Global Change Biology
It turns out that the study contains enough “weasel words” to equip an entire species of Mustelidae. (“Weasel words” are words like “could”, “may”, or “might” that you can use so that your scientific claims can never be falsified.) Here are some examples from the study.
Salinity changes may impact diversity, ecosystem and habitat structure loss, and community shifts including trophic cascades
Changes to [salinity] may strongly contribute to ocean stratification
Reduction in [mangrove] growth … due to elevated salinity … may be exacerbated by other stressors
[Salinity] tolerant and euryhaline harmful algae blooms may be favored and impact ecosystem structure and function.
Such species could be affected by the projected end of the century salinity changes
Shifts in phytoplankton communities may trigger trophic cascades
Negative effects [of salinity] on sexual reproduction (e.g., lowered gamete viability, fertilization, and polyspermy) and altered disease susceptibility can lead to decreased genetic diversity that may change ecosystem structure and function
Indirect effects [on seagrass] by modifying the rate of top-down interactions with grazers and metabolic disadvantages may alter ecosystem structure and function.
Disruption of cellular processes and metabolic rates (e.g., caused by enhanced energetic requirements for osmo-adjustments) are common in marine fish and invertebrates and may disturb fertilization, development, and sensory perception
Certain taxa, particularly those adapted to high marsh conditions, could migrate to fresher ecotones
Although many cosmopolitan microbial taxa will persist throughout regional salinity changes, their function may change
Sea level rise connected with salinization as well as ecotone shifts and trophic cascades may contribute to substantially altered ecosystem structure and functionality.
It is further predicted that seawater intrusion and regional salinity increase will cause a shift from methanogenesis-dominated to sulfate reduction-dominated metabolism, which will likely lower CH4 production in the short term.
Future projections from the phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) multi-model mean … show strong salinity changes that resemble the pattern of observed changes will continue
Mesopelagic fish larvae are usually distributed in high salinity waters, and even subtle drops in salinity (~1 psu) may impact egg and larval survival
Salinity-enhanced stratification may at least regionally suppress plankton biomass and productivity
For an organism, relocation or adjustment to osmotic and ionic stress may be energetically costly
Such species could be affected by the projected end of the century salinity changes (~0.5–1.0 psu)
It is of particular interest to understand which species are predicted to be the salinity change ‘losers’, as these may lead to altered or, in the most extreme case, loss of entire ecosystem functions.
While quantitative data are lacking, such short-term salinity variations may well pose a larger pressure on coral than the more consistent, long-term ocean scale salinity changes
Future shifts in salinity due to ice cap melting, precipitation variability, and SLR has the potential to alter global biogeochemical cycling, the effects of which are likely compounded by further climate change
For the nitrogen cycle, projected increases in nitrogen mineralization and reduced coupled nitrification–denitrification could result in increased NH4+ export from groundwater systems
Along the estuarine continuum, freshwater tidal and upland ecosystems may be the biggest ‘losers’ connected to changes in salinity.
Projected salinity changes on the order of ~0.5 to 1.0 psu until the end of the century in conjunction with increased short-term variations due to precipitation and runoff pattern changes are anticipated to lead to ecotone (i.e., transition areas between communities) or ecosystem shifts
Encroachment of halophyte species into fresher areas as saltwater reaches upstream may initially cause diversification of species at the ecotone and be an advantage to brackish taxa.
These regions are likely to undergo the most dramatic changes in salinity reduction and enhanced stratification
Salinity and inundation stress may also create a positive feedback loop for tidal wetlands at large, whereby stress and low reproduction leads to increased plant death and decay and decreased net carbon inputs, which then cause soil compaction and subsidence.
These responses may be influenced by any combination of physiological osmoacclimation and phenotypic plasticity (i.e., variation within strains), genetic variation among strains, and evolutionary osmoadaptation
We therefore applied distribution modeling to explore the effects of open ocean near-surface salinity changes on coral habitat suitability. Our models indicate pronounced responses to projected salinity changes.
In certain cases, [harmful algae blooms] may be induced by salinity changes
The ensuing shift to asexual reproduction promotes lower genetic diversity and may consequently impair the potential for adaptation to new selective marine regimes
Increasingly hyposaline conditions of the Baltic Sea may also cause a shift toward the prevalence of green algae
Climate model future projections (of end of the century salinity changes) indicate magnitudes that lead to modification of open ocean plankton community structure and habitat suitability of coral reef communities.
As wetland hydrology and seasonal rainfall patterns continue to change, die-offs in these areas may very well increase in frequency and coverage
By the end of the century, near-surface changes are projected to increase markedly, by an order of ~0.5 to 1.0 psu, and in the deep by about 0.05 psu.
Aquaculture may further be directly impacted
Salinity-triggered changes to global ocean currents (including the THC) and enhanced stratification may provide direct feedback on the rate of climate change, but the direct and indirect consequences on human socioeconomics remain difficult to quantify.
Accordingly, biodiversity shifts are projected as a result of salinity changes due to diversification within new niches
Existing research typically does not address spatial, diel, monthly, and seasonal variability of salinity. Enhanced short-term variability through extreme events (e.g., droughts, floodings) may well impose a stronger selective pressure on ecosystems than long-term changes
Future projections using the previous CMIP5 model suite are indicating these currently observed changes are likely to intensify
This review highlights that detailed data on the effects of salinity changes on the vast majority of ecologically and economically important ecosystems are lacking, which makes the projection of consequences highly inaccurate
Aaargh! Enough with the projections of potential and may and might and could! Not one of them is falsifiable, they all might happen … and?
Yes, projectionscould indicate the potential that it may be possible that I might win the lottery … but I’m not planning on using my potential lottery winnings for my retirement based on weasel words.
So, I decided to see what I could learn about salinity. Despite a life spent near, on, or in the ocean, despite spending years commercial fishing and ocean sailing and surfing and diving, my knowledge of the vagaries of ocean salinity at the start of this inquiry was … well, let me call it unimpressive and leave it at that.
In fact, most of what I knew of ocean salinity came from Izak Dinesen, who said:
The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.
That’s worked for me for my whole life, but I didn’t know, for example, whether the Atlantic is saltier than the Pacific (turns out it is). So I went about doing what I love to do … my homework on a subject where I know very little. Science for me is about the joy of learning.
It turns out that you can measure the salinity of the ocean from satellites. Who knew? Certainly not me. However, as is far too often true, they don’t make getting the data easy. In this case, I merely had to download 138 separate monthly NetCDF files, open each NetCDF file, extract the data for each month, resample that data to 180° latitude by 360° longitude, and create a 180 latitude x 360 longitude x 138 month array of the results where each layer in the array is a monthly global map of the salinity.
Easy money, right?
And at the end of that small matter of programming, here’s the average satellite-measured salinity over the recent period. Salinity is measured in “practical salinity units”, or “psu”.
Figure 1. Average sea surface salinity.
The global average is 34.6 psu, but there is some variation. Most of the globe is between ~ 32 and ~36 psu. The lowest surface salinity is in the Arctic, highest is in the Mediterranean. You can see the effect of the rainfall lowering the salinity in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the Pacific above the Equator.
Next, I looked at how much the salinity in each gridcell changes over the course of the year.
Figure 2. Average annual range sea surface salinity.
In Figure 2, we can see that the average annual swing from highest to lowest salinity is about 1 psu. In general, swings are higher in the tropics and on the eastern temperate coasts of the continents.
How about the trends in salinity? Here, we need to be cautious because we only have a bit more than a decade of data. I’ll return to that issue in a bit. For now, here are the decadal trends in salinity.
Figure 3. Decadal trends in sea surface salinity.
Note that the trends are very tiny. In addition, there’s a curiosity about them. They are far from being normally distributed. They most closely follow what’s called a “Cauchy” distribution. Here’s the distribution of the gridcell-by-gridcell salinity trends shown in Figure 3.
Figure 4. Histogram showing the distribution of the sea surface salinity decadal trends in black. Best-fit Cauchy and Normal distributions are also shown.
Although the range of the average swings in annual sea surface salinity for the ocean is 1 psu, we’re supposed to get all excited about a possible change of a tenth of a psu or less …
Here are those salinity datasets, which cover from 1900 to 2019 on a monthly basis.
Figure 5. Long-term changes in surface and deeper salinity.
Now I’m sure folks will scream that I’m minimizing the trends by using a zero-based graph … but look at the trends. The surface trend is the largest, and it’s only 0.013 psu per century. Not per decade. Per century, during a century of general warming.
However, for those who want it, here’s a close-up of the surface salinity. To avoid misrepresenting the situation, however, I’ve expressed the changes as deviations from the mean value of the total dataset.
Figure 6. Long-term changes in surface salinity, closeup view.
Note that even including the seasonal variations, the global average sea surface salinity has only varied about ± 0.2% over the entire period, and in 2019 we were back right about where we started.
Finally, how do the long-term and short-term datasets compare? Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of overlap, but given that it’s the world of climate datasets, the agreement is not bad. It does show us why the long-term trend from the EN4 dataset is slightly positive, while the short-term trend from the OISST dataset is negative.
Figure 7. Overlap period, short- and long-term sea surface salinity datasets. Changes are shown as percentage variations from the mean.
So … that’s what I learned today about salinity.
TL;DR version?
While changing salinity may make some difference somewhere, there’s no “salinity crisis”. Nor is there any significant overall trend in the salinity despite a century of warming. The guy in the first picture just wants to get more funding to support his ocean addiction. And I can hardly blame him, it’s why I took up commercial fishing …
My very best to everyone,
w.
My Request: Quote the exact words you’re discussing. Misunderstandings are the bane of the Intarwebs.
Where are the numeric probabilities with their associated uncertainty envelopes? Not everyone is an expert at interpreting hand-waving. Personally, I’m very poor at reading sign language. I do, however, get it when someone flashes me with a binary 4 (00100), which is basically what the alarmists are doing all the time!
You beat me to it. For all the quotes Willis has shown, not one number was given.
I did read through the study. It is model driven throughout. With all the references to other studies it appears to be a reanalysis of other studies which I did not bother to check. From what I could decipher with a brief perusal, the models predict increased rainfall over land surfaces resulting in additional minerals being sent to the ocean. I thought droughts were supposed to be the problem with higher temperatures, not floods!
This appears to be another “study” that proceeds from the forgone conclusion that the models are predictive, whereas actual use of the measured data that Willis has shown is passe.
Duane
August 1, 2023 10:45 am
Hold my beer!!
And wait just a goldarned minute. All those maybes and could be’s and might be’s all appear to be based on an assumption that oceanic salinity may increase as a result of global warming/climate change.
If sea levels rise as claimed, what is the only possible source of more water in the oceans?
I’ll give you a hint: it won’t be salty water. Any adds to sea level must necessarily be fresh water, and so the only possible result of fresh water dilution of oceanic salt water is to reduce the salinity of the oceans.
Am I missing something here? Is the global warming boogie man also armed with a gigantic salt shaker?
In any case the relative change in ocean salinity due to melting glaciers is minuscule, given the minuscule mass of the remnants of the latest glaciation era, relative to the existing mass of the oceans. Given that the mean depth of the world’s oceans is about 12 thousand feet and even the worst case SLR projections from models is only about 3 feet in the next century, then the addition of mass to the oceans would be only 0.03% of existing mass alsomeans that the change in salinity would be only about 0.03%. Can that change in salinity even be measured, let alone cause large changes in the biota?
“Am I missing something here?”
Yes. The presumed feedback of AGW is increased atmospheric water vapour resulting from increased heating resulting from increased CO2. Where does the increase in atmospheric water vapour come from? The oceans, which now have less water, thus increased salinity.
The alarmists have an answer for everything.
Well, the continuity equation long used by us engineers states that mass can be neither created nor destroyed. If there is additional water in the oceans, it has to come from somewhere. There may be a slight feedback mechanism from increased water vapor but it is insignificant, given that water vapor only exists in the lower part of the atmosphere, and that precipitation will in fact just return it right back to the oceans. Precipitation is increased because warmer air rises, and the standard lapse rate dictates a temperature drop of 4.6 degrees per thousand feet. Inevitably, at some point not far above the ocean surface – within a few thousand feet – that rising water vapor-laden air is going to condense the vapor where it will fall right back down the ocean.
By the way, if the ocean warms, causing increased precipitation, it not only falls right back down to the oceans (either directly, or if precipitating over land, via runoff to the oceans), but all that precipitating water vapor loses its heat of vaporization when it condenses, thus cooling off both the lower atmosphere and the oceans.
It’s like these so called “climate scientists” really only know about one thing – how to build models, and are actually clueless when it comes to real world physics, chemistry, and meteorology.
David, if the oceans are rising due to warming as claimed, there will be MORE water, not less …
Except for the expansion of the water due to temperature increases, the differential due to tectonic movement, isostatic adjustment, subsidence to to substrata changes, and reconfiguration into a smooth bowl for easy calculations, plus probably a few other factors.
I am certain that any increase in atmospheric moisture are extremely tiny compared to the volume of the oceans. And there is no reason to suppose that such changes have not been happening for all of time.
We are releasing groundwater.
The Sahara is a desert but did not used to be.
Ice areas and volume expands then recedes.
And the Earth is getting greener.
Each of these changes the amount of water in the ocean, but is it even a rounding error? I bet it is when the ocean is 400 feet lower, like it was 18,000 years ago.
Then it changed.
And the ocean life seems to have done just fine.
Warmistas live in a state of panic because they think the planet and life are delicate things teetering on the brink of being wiped out by any tiny change in conditions.
But I know for a fact the opposite is true.
Because I have studied things like Earth history.
One thing I have learn in my 70 years of living. Mother nature is no mother if you luckily enough to be born, hatch or what every the first thing she goes about doing is trying to kill you. As to the earth and mother nature, the earth will remain until the sun snuffs it out. Life will remain as long as the sun does not snuff it out, what life will look like long into the future no one knows. Can man change the climate, at this point most probably locally only. I do have to agree with a Canadian comedian where he say mother brought man to this point to release CO2 because earth need something to counter act all those pesky animals and plants that a burying it.
No.
Salt does not effect pH.
It is neutral.
There may be some effect if it causes changes in overall ocean chemistry, involving molecules or ions that do effect acidity, but that is not likely to occur to any large degree.
The pH of ocean water changes by a lot, all day and night, all the time, everywhere.
pH is a measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution. Specifically, it is minus the logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration.
Sodium and chloride do not directly participate in the acid-base chemistry of the ocean, which is one reason they have accumulated in the ocean over geologic time.
Various sources will tell you that yes, changes in salinity cause changes in pH. Some say lower salinity results in lower pH, but others say the opposite. But what they are really talking about is that water of different salinity levels will have various pH levels, different amounts of various ions that do effect pH, etc.
But that does not mean one causes the other.
More like the reasons why different parts of the ocean have different salinity levels, also cause them to have various levels of all kinds of other stuff.
Correlation is not causation.
Sodium chloride dissolved in deionized water has a neutral pH.
Turns out that in oceanography, the term salinity does not include a simple measure of sodium chloride.
It refers to a set of ions in solution, and may in some cases even include CO2.
In fact, some sources say CO2 gas, not just the small fraction that is converted to carbonate and bicarbonate, is “often” included in measurements of salinity.
In light of this, what I said about sodium chloride is likely not true in the context of oceanography.
But it appears I am not the only one who was using the common definition of what salt and hence salinity is referring to.
Lot’s of things are, of course, “salts”, while one very common substance is what we call in the common parlance as “salt”.
“Salts that produce hydroxide ions when dissolved in water are called alkali salts and salts that produce hydrogen ions when dissolved in water are called acid salts.
Neutral salts are those salts that are neither acidic nor alkaline.
The component ions in a salt compound can be either inorganic, such as chloride (Cl−), or organic, such as acetate (CH3COO−). Each ion can be either monatomic, such as fluoride (F−), or polyatomic, such as sulfate (SO2−4).
I don’t know if the Cliff Ross article, or the databases Willis accessed, have any information on the substance(s) they claim to be measuring but surely the ocean contains all, but probably by differing concentrations in different locations.
Dissolved solids in water at least includes salts. Possibly only salts can be dissolved solids but I don’t really know. The local supply comes from two deep wells. When I asked the local water company about water analysis reports, they first told me that a “safety analysis” is required by state law each month, and a full analysis each year. However, when I asked for a copy of the latest report, all they could find was a not very detailed report from 4 years ago. Seems suspicious to me.
Total Dissolved Solids were reported as 440 parts per million (high), consisting mainly of magnesium and sulfur. Calcium, which is a big component in many hard waters, was rather low here.
I read that the most accurate measure of TDS is through measuring out one liter or water, evaporating it, and weighing the residue (micrograms/liter). A good TDS meter, which measures conduction through the water, can come pretty close to the weight figure. Anyway, though I don’t know the exact numbers, there are ways to measure small weights pretty accurately. I bet, however, that satellite measurement of same are orders of magnitude less certain.
“I don’t know if the Cliff Ross article, or the databases Willis accessed, have any information on the substance(s) they claim to be measuring but surely the ocean contains all, but probably by differing concentrations in different locations.”
This is a good question, and probably worthy of a whole detailed conversation.
I did come across some sources in my reading yesterday that indicated that generally speaking, the ocean is assumed to be well mixed, and that the proportions of various constituents of seawater assumed to uniform and constant, even as salinity varies due to numerous factors.
This is of course a highly dubious assumption, if one gets down to talking about small human influenced alterations being disastrous.
We know for sure that the concentration and solubility of dissolved gasses changes with temperature, which varies hugely from place to place in the ocean.
There are all sorts of inputs that alter the volume and composition of the ocean, overall and in specific locations, and I cannot think of any of them that add things to the ocean in the same proportions as is existing already.
The only such alteration that seems easy to specify precisely is that when evaporation occurs, it is H2O that is evaporating. But is even that the whole story? We know that salt from the oceans is an important part of condensation nuclei in some clouds. And that salt in the air limits what plants can live at various distances from the shorelines. And where water gets hot due to insolation, CO2 and O2 are leaving the water due to decreased solubility.
Runoff from rivers, upwelling, volcanic activity, rainfall, sea ice forming and then melting away again, glacier calving…all of these things change the composition of seawater, and always have.
BTW, in reference to if only salts can be dissolved solids, the answer is no.
There are things that can be “dissolved” that are not ionic.
For example, the term “Total Dissolved Solids”, or TDS: “is a measure of the dissolved combined content of all inorganic and organic substances present in a liquid in molecular, ionized, or micro-granular (colloidal sol) suspended form.”
The entire subject of solubility is a very important and complex one.
Water will dissolve nearly everything to some degree. And there are plenty of things in seawater that are not salts at all. Plenty that are not ionic, but neutral atoms and molecules.
Chemistry is a subject with it’s own language, and much of does not correspond well with how words are used in common parlance.
One area where this is particularly notable is regarding solubility
“Insoluble” does not mean what it sounds like, when used by a chemist.
See the pic below. Note that depending on context, the term insoluble itself can vary, but it does not mean that zero of some substance will be in solution, since there are very few if any things that cannot dissolve whatsoever. Instead, there are cutoffs in the definition, and in some contexts they are not even very low.
Doubtful to assume that pH is unchanged by salinity.
The effect of increased total ionic strength on pH, by adding salt, is complicated and somewhat summarised by the Debye- Huckle equations.
They come back to defining what the hydrogen ion H+ does, what it means for what it is used for.
It reveals that many climate change authors cannot even get the definition of pH correct. When they claim that pH is a measure of the hydrogen ion concentration, they are wrong. It is the activity of the hydrogen ion that matters.
Chemists untrained in the correct finer points of aqueous chemistry should pause before rushing to print.
Geoff S
Is it not wrong, it is correct under the circumstances that exist in the situations under study and discussion.
It is not wrong to refer to air cooling adiabatically when it rises, even though no one thinks that the “ideal” or theoretical situation applies to real world conditions. It is that in the circumstances under consideration, such deviations from ideal theoretical behavior are de minimus.
Theoretically, if your grandmom gave you a quarter for Christmas back when you were a kid, someone owes taxes on that gift.
But even the IRS makes exceptions for de minimus quantities.
Under your interpretation, the ideal gas law is wrong, because ideal conditions are a theoretical construct that exist nowhere in the actual universe.
But in practice, it is useful because it gives answers that are good enough under many circumstances.
The question is not whether there are situations where the ionic concentrations are so high that the hydrogen ion activity coefficient differs meaningfully from unity, it is what happens if the salinity of seawater is increased slightly.
Is there a temperature, pressure, and amount of NaCl that will change the effective activity of hydrogen ion in an aqueous solution, and thus result in measurements that differ from the true ionic concentration?
I would have given a different response if anyone was talking about that.
The idea of discussion, IMO, is to exchange meaningful information. In a place like this, that includes for some of us attempts to be helpful to others in understanding things.
Perhaps you would like to explain the sorts of conditions in which the ordinary definition of pH does not apply? Or is your role simply to condescend and you cannot be bothered to actually try to be helpful and or explain what it is you mean?
I know what you mean, and I know what the person asking the question meant.
Most people are not trained chemists.
Given how much sodium chloride is already in seawater, and given the overall ionic concentrations of all species present, adding some sodium chloride to seawater will not by itself alter the pH by a meaningful amount.
But if one adds a mixture of the various ions that might be present in seawater, and which are included in the oceanographers definition of salinity (although one would also have to specify which of several such definitions one is referring to), then yes, pH will change, since those ions have collectively given seawater it existing non-neutral pH.
And if there are equations in chemistry that will give a different result, but it is of a magnitude that is below the resolution limits currently being employed and thus the numbers being discussed, it is inconsequential.
The pH of the ocean varies over distances and time scales that are very small compared to teh timescales in question and the size of the entire water volume those numbers are purported to represent, and those differences are often far in excess of the numbers being bandied about as if they have world altering consequences.
Nicholas,
Thank you for your understanding and final agreement.
The correct pH formal definition uses activity, not the same as concentration. Rather like airspeed of an aircraft is not the same as goundspeed when there is a head or tail wind vector.
I wrote part of a draft Master’s Thesis on high ionic strength solutions but that was about 1969 and the details are no longer front of mind.
You are correct that a uniform high ionic strength allows some items to cancel in close comparisons, which can allow some simplifications. But Debye-huckel equations are real and complicated and there for use when if you seek best formalism.
We hope that placards will not appear saying “Down with Debye-Huckel” etc.
Geoff S
Denis
August 1, 2023 11:12 am
Was there any data in the paper at all?
Rud Istvan
August 1, 2023 11:35 am
I got curious, so dug a bit into CMIP6 sea surface salinity (SSS) projections. They are inferences rather than direct model results. An analysis in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences of 33 CMIP6 models projects a global SSS reduction of 0.44g salt/kg water, based on modeled ice sheet loss and accelerating sea level rise (but it hasn’t accelerated). At any rate, some significant future reduction in salinity caused by modeled global warming.
Then I counted the number of coulds/mays in the WE post where the direction of SSS change was unambiguous, or unambiguously implied. For example, ‘reduced mangrove growth due to elevated salinity’ is unambiguous. There are six, and all 6 are ‘maybe’ concerned with the negative impact of HIGHER salinity, not lower. OOPS.
No maybe about it, a for sure confused example of bassackwards ‘climate science’.
“could” is not a science word- when I see that word, I stop reading
Does it not depend on the context? Throwing a pair of dice “could” produce snake eyes, it “could” be a 12, or it “could” be any value in between. The statement is, I believe, completely true, and no weaseling is involved.
As for that math example- I bet math researchers still wouldn’t use the word “could”. They’d say something like, “the probability of whatever is….”. The word “could” seems rather useless to me.
Mortgage payment deadlines wait for no grant committee decisions
abolition man
August 1, 2023 1:24 pm
Another great post, Willis, but I beg to differ!
I foresee a serious salinity crisis coming up at the end of our current interglacial! If the eco-loons are worried about minor increases in salinity, how will they react to large changes as huge amounts of water get locked up in ice caps and glaciers!? Then there is the problem of decreasing atmospheric CO2 over the last 150,000,000+ years leading to the current shortage! No two ways about it, we’ll need to work our butts off to preserve life on Earth by releasing vast amounts of trapped CO2 back into the air! I highly recommend smokers and BBQs!
Incidentally, I believe the THC the study refers to is the thermohaline circulation, but it seems that the author may be consuming too much of the other!
From one old salt to another, well done Willis, or in Navy parlance Bravo Zulu
Alastair Brickell
August 1, 2023 1:32 pm
Thanks so much for what you do with data. I bet all the ‘experts’ such as the paper’s author have never seen the data they’re working on presented in such a clear fashion, despite being paid to do it! Figures 1-3 are clear and instantly give one an appreciation of what’s actually going on with salinity globally.
Fig. 5 however brings up one of my personal gripes…I was looking at the blue horizontal line on the y axis at about 24 psu for some time before I realised that it was just a horizontal line in the background image of the sea, not something important like the red, yellow, blue, etc. lines between 30-35 psu. I really feel that the colourful backgrounds you sometimes use can often obscure the data and its interpretation, not assist. I don’t really need pretty pictures; just good clear data which you always provide, eg. Figs. 4 & 7…one can instantly see what’s going on with no background interference.
However, happy to accept that it could be my possibly ancient eyes that might just be getting in the way and could possibly cause this potential problem.
Florida seems to have some of the greatest changes of anywhere. Maybe they should have looked at why that was. Then perhaps the study might have been useful.
It is more pH than salinity, as WE charts show. Altho both vary a great deal over the seasons. Wrote up Florida Bay in essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke. Where the Everglades fresh water flows into Florida Bay’s mangrove fringe, the winter fringe bay water is pH 5.6 (actually acidic). In high summer on the Bay side off Key West, it reaches pH 9.6 on sunny afternoons as a result of evaporation raising salinity causing carbonate precipitation, and the thallassia sea grass photosynthesizing like crazy. Yet the conch, crab, and fish thrive year round in Florida Bay.
Cause they got them some of that there homeostasis, hear-tell.
Dave Fair
August 1, 2023 1:45 pm
Hey, Willis and others’ providing substantive comments on this paper you might want to consider submitting your comments (and this WUWT Thread) to the University of North Florida, PubPeer and Retraction Watch. Such an ongoing practice may (hee, hee) have salutary future impacts on CliSciFi.
toddzrx
August 1, 2023 2:07 pm
Pretty sad that a paper like this gets published and that this study can even get funded. It’s not science when the predictions may or may not happen.
A regional take on salinity might be interesting too:
The Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA) originally referred to an event in the late 1960s to early 1970s where a large influx of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean led to a salinity anomaly in the northern North Atlantic Ocean, which affected the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
Since then, the term “Great Salinity Anomaly” has been applied to successive occurrences of the same phenomenon, including the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1980s and the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1990s.The Great Salinity Anomalies were advective events, propagating to different sea basins and areas of the North Atlantic, and is on the decadal-scale for the anomalies in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
For the anomaly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the main cause of the anomaly was by a freshwater and sea ice pulse which came from the Arctic Ocean via the Fram Strait.
And now, we’re up for another GSA, as the Fram export was on record levels this year.
”We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. …
Changes in salinity and stratification impact the extent of deep convection and contribute to density changes in the overflow waters and the subpolar deep western boundary currents and hence the MOC.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6989661/
After the GSA in 2012-2016 we got a strong recovery in Arctic sea ice.
I suppose this recovery will continue after this years record export of freshwater through the Fram strait.
Kip, you post sailor facts. Alarmists don’t post facts at all.
Bob
August 1, 2023 3:49 pm
Nice work Willis. It seems obvious to me that weasel words should not be taken as science. If a study is found to have too high a percentage of weasel words it should be returned to the authors for corrections. Certainly not published and if not corrected all funds must be returned.
How exactly does warming, if there is any, result in more salt in the ocean?
Sure, there is evaporation, but that all makes it’s way back into the ocean soon enough.
I have always wondered about salt mining for things like de-icing highways.
The amounts are ginormous, in familiar units like pounds and tons and such, and it all ends up in the ocean soon enough, but it is a lot when compared to the volume of the ocean and the amounts of salt already in ocean water?
No idea. But I did not see it mentioned by climate change salinity guy.
And he seems to be all up in a snit over some mighty small changes.
All that salt is mined from the remains of long-ago dried-up oceans and seas…mostly inland seas, I think.
But it is like fossil fuels…segregated, then dug up and used by people.
So, if it gets warm enough, maybe we will not have any highways to d-ice, and we can stop digging up huge salt deposits that almost immediately wash into the oceans.
So how again do changes in temp cause changes in salinity?
I am not buying the proposition that “Climate Change” has a single thing to do with overall salinity levels. Logically it will get saltier in some places and less salty in others, but unless the total amount of actual salt changes, it all averages out.
I learned a new word, Mustelidae. Thanks Willis!
I learned a new nomenclature for spinning propaganda and spreading disinformation: “Weasel Words” Brilliant Willis!
that term is right up there with “word salad”
That’s for vegan use. Weasel words is for carnivores.
Figure 6 looks like “no significant trend”. Variable, but within the same range.
Yes, Tom. Just like global average atmospheric temperature if you look at a long enough trend.
That certainly is an impressive list of weasel words for one paper.
It is, but a lot of them are like that. Oddly, those words are often omitted when MSM breathlessly reports the latest “scary study”.
Yet another junk science paper from a junior academic angling for fame and big grants. The debasement of the scientific enterprise continues apace.
Where are the numeric probabilities with their associated uncertainty envelopes? Not everyone is an expert at interpreting hand-waving. Personally, I’m very poor at reading sign language. I do, however, get it when someone flashes me with a binary 4 (00100), which is basically what the alarmists are doing all the time!
A most excellent new one, Clyde.
You beat me to it. For all the quotes Willis has shown, not one number was given.
I did read through the study. It is model driven throughout. With all the references to other studies it appears to be a reanalysis of other studies which I did not bother to check. From what I could decipher with a brief perusal, the models predict increased rainfall over land surfaces resulting in additional minerals being sent to the ocean. I thought droughts were supposed to be the problem with higher temperatures, not floods!
This appears to be another “study” that proceeds from the forgone conclusion that the models are predictive, whereas actual use of the measured data that Willis has shown is passe.
Hold my beer!!
And wait just a goldarned minute. All those maybes and could be’s and might be’s all appear to be based on an assumption that oceanic salinity may increase as a result of global warming/climate change.
If sea levels rise as claimed, what is the only possible source of more water in the oceans?
I’ll give you a hint: it won’t be salty water. Any adds to sea level must necessarily be fresh water, and so the only possible result of fresh water dilution of oceanic salt water is to reduce the salinity of the oceans.
Am I missing something here? Is the global warming boogie man also armed with a gigantic salt shaker?
In any case the relative change in ocean salinity due to melting glaciers is minuscule, given the minuscule mass of the remnants of the latest glaciation era, relative to the existing mass of the oceans. Given that the mean depth of the world’s oceans is about 12 thousand feet and even the worst case SLR projections from models is only about 3 feet in the next century, then the addition of mass to the oceans would be only 0.03% of existing mass alsomeans that the change in salinity would be only about 0.03%. Can that change in salinity even be measured, let alone cause large changes in the biota?
I think not.
“Am I missing something here?”
Yes. The presumed feedback of AGW is increased atmospheric water vapour resulting from increased heating resulting from increased CO2. Where does the increase in atmospheric water vapour come from? The oceans, which now have less water, thus increased salinity.
The alarmists have an answer for everything.
Well, the continuity equation long used by us engineers states that mass can be neither created nor destroyed. If there is additional water in the oceans, it has to come from somewhere. There may be a slight feedback mechanism from increased water vapor but it is insignificant, given that water vapor only exists in the lower part of the atmosphere, and that precipitation will in fact just return it right back to the oceans. Precipitation is increased because warmer air rises, and the standard lapse rate dictates a temperature drop of 4.6 degrees per thousand feet. Inevitably, at some point not far above the ocean surface – within a few thousand feet – that rising water vapor-laden air is going to condense the vapor where it will fall right back down the ocean.
By the way, if the ocean warms, causing increased precipitation, it not only falls right back down to the oceans (either directly, or if precipitating over land, via runoff to the oceans), but all that precipitating water vapor loses its heat of vaporization when it condenses, thus cooling off both the lower atmosphere and the oceans.
It’s like these so called “climate scientists” really only know about one thing – how to build models, and are actually clueless when it comes to real world physics, chemistry, and meteorology.
David, if the oceans are rising due to warming as claimed, there will be MORE water, not less …
w.
🤔
Except for the expansion of the water due to temperature increases, the differential due to tectonic movement, isostatic adjustment, subsidence to to substrata changes, and reconfiguration into a smooth bowl for easy calculations, plus probably a few other factors.
Really, a 1C increase in air temperature is enough to hold all the water that they are claiming has come off the glaciers?
BTW, if your supposition was correct, then sea levels ought to be falling, as there is more water going out of them, then into them.
I am certain that any increase in atmospheric moisture are extremely tiny compared to the volume of the oceans. And there is no reason to suppose that such changes have not been happening for all of time.
We are releasing groundwater.
The Sahara is a desert but did not used to be.
Ice areas and volume expands then recedes.
And the Earth is getting greener.
Each of these changes the amount of water in the ocean, but is it even a rounding error? I bet it is when the ocean is 400 feet lower, like it was 18,000 years ago.
Then it changed.
And the ocean life seems to have done just fine.
Warmistas live in a state of panic because they think the planet and life are delicate things teetering on the brink of being wiped out by any tiny change in conditions.
But I know for a fact the opposite is true.
Because I have studied things like Earth history.
I believe that is generally called projection.
One thing I have learn in my 70 years of living. Mother nature is no mother if you luckily enough to be born, hatch or what every the first thing she goes about doing is trying to kill you. As to the earth and mother nature, the earth will remain until the sun snuffs it out. Life will remain as long as the sun does not snuff it out, what life will look like long into the future no one knows. Can man change the climate, at this point most probably locally only. I do have to agree with a Canadian comedian where he say mother brought man to this point to release CO2 because earth need something to counter act all those pesky animals and plants that a burying it.
Duane, are you implying that your common sense overrides a college professor’s intelligence?
And if the ocean get’s saltier won’t that salt increase the pH, thereby counteracting ocean acidification? Problem solved.
No.
Salt does not effect pH.
It is neutral.
There may be some effect if it causes changes in overall ocean chemistry, involving molecules or ions that do effect acidity, but that is not likely to occur to any large degree.
The pH of ocean water changes by a lot, all day and night, all the time, everywhere.
pH is a measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution. Specifically, it is minus the logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration.
Sodium and chloride do not directly participate in the acid-base chemistry of the ocean, which is one reason they have accumulated in the ocean over geologic time.
Various sources will tell you that yes, changes in salinity cause changes in pH. Some say lower salinity results in lower pH, but others say the opposite. But what they are really talking about is that water of different salinity levels will have various pH levels, different amounts of various ions that do effect pH, etc.
But that does not mean one causes the other.
More like the reasons why different parts of the ocean have different salinity levels, also cause them to have various levels of all kinds of other stuff.
Correlation is not causation.
Sodium chloride dissolved in deionized water has a neutral pH.
Turns out that in oceanography, the term salinity does not include a simple measure of sodium chloride.
It refers to a set of ions in solution, and may in some cases even include CO2.
In fact, some sources say CO2 gas, not just the small fraction that is converted to carbonate and bicarbonate, is “often” included in measurements of salinity.
In light of this, what I said about sodium chloride is likely not true in the context of oceanography.
But it appears I am not the only one who was using the common definition of what salt and hence salinity is referring to.
Lot’s of things are, of course, “salts”, while one very common substance is what we call in the common parlance as “salt”.
I don’t know if the Cliff Ross article, or the databases Willis accessed, have any information on the substance(s) they claim to be measuring but surely the ocean contains all, but probably by differing concentrations in different locations.
Dissolved solids in water at least includes salts. Possibly only salts can be dissolved solids but I don’t really know. The local supply comes from two deep wells. When I asked the local water company about water analysis reports, they first told me that a “safety analysis” is required by state law each month, and a full analysis each year. However, when I asked for a copy of the latest report, all they could find was a not very detailed report from 4 years ago. Seems suspicious to me.
Total Dissolved Solids were reported as 440 parts per million (high), consisting mainly of magnesium and sulfur. Calcium, which is a big component in many hard waters, was rather low here.
I read that the most accurate measure of TDS is through measuring out one liter or water, evaporating it, and weighing the residue (micrograms/liter). A good TDS meter, which measures conduction through the water, can come pretty close to the weight figure. Anyway, though I don’t know the exact numbers, there are ways to measure small weights pretty accurately. I bet, however, that satellite measurement of same are orders of magnitude less certain.
“I don’t know if the Cliff Ross article, or the databases Willis accessed, have any information on the substance(s) they claim to be measuring but surely the ocean contains all, but probably by differing concentrations in different locations.”
This is a good question, and probably worthy of a whole detailed conversation.
I did come across some sources in my reading yesterday that indicated that generally speaking, the ocean is assumed to be well mixed, and that the proportions of various constituents of seawater assumed to uniform and constant, even as salinity varies due to numerous factors.
This is of course a highly dubious assumption, if one gets down to talking about small human influenced alterations being disastrous.
We know for sure that the concentration and solubility of dissolved gasses changes with temperature, which varies hugely from place to place in the ocean.
There are all sorts of inputs that alter the volume and composition of the ocean, overall and in specific locations, and I cannot think of any of them that add things to the ocean in the same proportions as is existing already.
The only such alteration that seems easy to specify precisely is that when evaporation occurs, it is H2O that is evaporating. But is even that the whole story? We know that salt from the oceans is an important part of condensation nuclei in some clouds. And that salt in the air limits what plants can live at various distances from the shorelines. And where water gets hot due to insolation, CO2 and O2 are leaving the water due to decreased solubility.
Runoff from rivers, upwelling, volcanic activity, rainfall, sea ice forming and then melting away again, glacier calving…all of these things change the composition of seawater, and always have.
BTW, in reference to if only salts can be dissolved solids, the answer is no.
There are things that can be “dissolved” that are not ionic.
For example, the term “Total Dissolved Solids”, or TDS: “is a measure of the dissolved combined content of all inorganic and organic substances present in a liquid in molecular, ionized, or micro-granular (colloidal sol) suspended form.”
The entire subject of solubility is a very important and complex one.
Water will dissolve nearly everything to some degree. And there are plenty of things in seawater that are not salts at all. Plenty that are not ionic, but neutral atoms and molecules.
Chemistry is a subject with it’s own language, and much of does not correspond well with how words are used in common parlance.
One area where this is particularly notable is regarding solubility
“Insoluble” does not mean what it sounds like, when used by a chemist.
See the pic below. Note that depending on context, the term insoluble itself can vary, but it does not mean that zero of some substance will be in solution, since there are very few if any things that cannot dissolve whatsoever. Instead, there are cutoffs in the definition, and in some contexts they are not even very low.
Doubtful to assume that pH is unchanged by salinity.
The effect of increased total ionic strength on pH, by adding salt, is complicated and somewhat summarised by the Debye- Huckle equations.
They come back to defining what the hydrogen ion H+ does, what it means for what it is used for.
It reveals that many climate change authors cannot even get the definition of pH correct. When they claim that pH is a measure of the hydrogen ion concentration, they are wrong. It is the activity of the hydrogen ion that matters.
Chemists untrained in the correct finer points of aqueous chemistry should pause before rushing to print.
Geoff S
Is it not wrong, it is correct under the circumstances that exist in the situations under study and discussion.
It is not wrong to refer to air cooling adiabatically when it rises, even though no one thinks that the “ideal” or theoretical situation applies to real world conditions. It is that in the circumstances under consideration, such deviations from ideal theoretical behavior are de minimus.
Theoretically, if your grandmom gave you a quarter for Christmas back when you were a kid, someone owes taxes on that gift.
But even the IRS makes exceptions for de minimus quantities.
Under your interpretation, the ideal gas law is wrong, because ideal conditions are a theoretical construct that exist nowhere in the actual universe.
But in practice, it is useful because it gives answers that are good enough under many circumstances.
The question is not whether there are situations where the ionic concentrations are so high that the hydrogen ion activity coefficient differs meaningfully from unity, it is what happens if the salinity of seawater is increased slightly.
Is there a temperature, pressure, and amount of NaCl that will change the effective activity of hydrogen ion in an aqueous solution, and thus result in measurements that differ from the true ionic concentration?
I would have given a different response if anyone was talking about that.
The idea of discussion, IMO, is to exchange meaningful information. In a place like this, that includes for some of us attempts to be helpful to others in understanding things.
Perhaps you would like to explain the sorts of conditions in which the ordinary definition of pH does not apply? Or is your role simply to condescend and you cannot be bothered to actually try to be helpful and or explain what it is you mean?
I know what you mean, and I know what the person asking the question meant.
Most people are not trained chemists.
Given how much sodium chloride is already in seawater, and given the overall ionic concentrations of all species present, adding some sodium chloride to seawater will not by itself alter the pH by a meaningful amount.
But if one adds a mixture of the various ions that might be present in seawater, and which are included in the oceanographers definition of salinity (although one would also have to specify which of several such definitions one is referring to), then yes, pH will change, since those ions have collectively given seawater it existing non-neutral pH.
And if there are equations in chemistry that will give a different result, but it is of a magnitude that is below the resolution limits currently being employed and thus the numbers being discussed, it is inconsequential.
The pH of the ocean varies over distances and time scales that are very small compared to teh timescales in question and the size of the entire water volume those numbers are purported to represent, and those differences are often far in excess of the numbers being bandied about as if they have world altering consequences.
Nicholas,
Thank you for your understanding and final agreement.
The correct pH formal definition uses activity, not the same as concentration. Rather like airspeed of an aircraft is not the same as goundspeed when there is a head or tail wind vector.
I wrote part of a draft Master’s Thesis on high ionic strength solutions but that was about 1969 and the details are no longer front of mind.
You are correct that a uniform high ionic strength allows some items to cancel in close comparisons, which can allow some simplifications. But Debye-huckel equations are real and complicated and there for use when if you seek best formalism.
We hope that placards will not appear saying “Down with Debye-Huckel” etc.
Geoff S
Was there any data in the paper at all?
I got curious, so dug a bit into CMIP6 sea surface salinity (SSS) projections. They are inferences rather than direct model results. An analysis in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences of 33 CMIP6 models projects a global SSS reduction of 0.44g salt/kg water, based on modeled ice sheet loss and accelerating sea level rise (but it hasn’t accelerated). At any rate, some significant future reduction in salinity caused by modeled global warming.
Then I counted the number of coulds/mays in the WE post where the direction of SSS change was unambiguous, or unambiguously implied. For example, ‘reduced mangrove growth due to elevated salinity’ is unambiguous. There are six, and all 6 are ‘maybe’ concerned with the negative impact of HIGHER salinity, not lower. OOPS.
No maybe about it, a for sure confused example of bassackwards ‘climate science’.
Same point I made above, Rud. They are talking out of both sides of their mouths and hoping nobody listens to their illogic.
I was researching while you were commenting, so did not see it until after posting my comment. Yes, provable illogic.
“could” is not a science word- when I see that word, I stop reading
Does it not depend on the context? Throwing a pair of dice “could” produce snake eyes, it “could” be a 12, or it “could” be any value in between. The statement is, I believe, completely true, and no weaseling is involved.
As for that math example- I bet math researchers still wouldn’t use the word “could”. They’d say something like, “the probability of whatever is….”. The word “could” seems rather useless to me.
thats because you think science could be settled. science is the study of could and maybe
Ditto for “computer models show…”
computer models show the plane wont fly,
computer models show the lunar lander will work.
computer models show that Landfall will happen Wensday.
computer show that the implosion will cause a nuclear chain reaction and
make the bomb go boom. lets test
computer models Show that planes can take the world trade center down
computer models convinced swartzkoft his attack plan would work.
since ALL science is never settled but only contingent COULD is the only word that can be used
I just invented a new term, “old sawdust” for old woodsmen. 🙂
Does that mean your bark is worse than your bite?
There is really only one way to determine if sea water is getting saltier, and that’s to apply the Pepsi taste test –
(Disclaimer – these results MAY NOT be reliable)
” the projected end of the century salinity changes”
If a person knew the salinity of the ocean 77 years out, . . . never mind.
Efforts of ocean mining are on the rise. Surely, if much mineral extraction come to pass, water changes will occur.
Evidence of existence of potential, is not evidence of existence of outcome.
Climate Scientists are in 100% agreement about the following fact. It’s absolutely settled.
“The [climate] scientists say more research and funding are desperately needed before it’s too late.”
Mortgage payment deadlines wait for no grant committee decisions
Another great post, Willis, but I beg to differ!
I foresee a serious salinity crisis coming up at the end of our current interglacial! If the eco-loons are worried about minor increases in salinity, how will they react to large changes as huge amounts of water get locked up in ice caps and glaciers!? Then there is the problem of decreasing atmospheric CO2 over the last 150,000,000+ years leading to the current shortage! No two ways about it, we’ll need to work our butts off to preserve life on Earth by releasing vast amounts of trapped CO2 back into the air! I highly recommend smokers and BBQs!
Incidentally, I believe the THC the study refers to is the thermohaline circulation, but it seems that the author may be consuming too much of the other!
From one old salt to another, well done Willis, or in Navy parlance Bravo Zulu
Thanks so much for what you do with data. I bet all the ‘experts’ such as the paper’s author have never seen the data they’re working on presented in such a clear fashion, despite being paid to do it! Figures 1-3 are clear and instantly give one an appreciation of what’s actually going on with salinity globally.
Fig. 5 however brings up one of my personal gripes…I was looking at the blue horizontal line on the y axis at about 24 psu for some time before I realised that it was just a horizontal line in the background image of the sea, not something important like the red, yellow, blue, etc. lines between 30-35 psu. I really feel that the colourful backgrounds you sometimes use can often obscure the data and its interpretation, not assist. I don’t really need pretty pictures; just good clear data which you always provide, eg. Figs. 4 & 7…one can instantly see what’s going on with no background interference.
However, happy to accept that it could be my possibly ancient eyes that might just be getting in the way and could possibly cause this potential problem.
Florida seems to have some of the greatest changes of anywhere. Maybe they should have looked at why that was. Then perhaps the study might have been useful.
It is more pH than salinity, as WE charts show. Altho both vary a great deal over the seasons. Wrote up Florida Bay in essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke. Where the Everglades fresh water flows into Florida Bay’s mangrove fringe, the winter fringe bay water is pH 5.6 (actually acidic). In high summer on the Bay side off Key West, it reaches pH 9.6 on sunny afternoons as a result of evaporation raising salinity causing carbonate precipitation, and the thallassia sea grass photosynthesizing like crazy. Yet the conch, crab, and fish thrive year round in Florida Bay.
Cause they got them some of that there homeostasis, hear-tell.
Hey, Willis and others’ providing substantive comments on this paper you might want to consider submitting your comments (and this WUWT Thread) to the University of North Florida, PubPeer and Retraction Watch. Such an ongoing practice may (hee, hee) have salutary future impacts on CliSciFi.
Pretty sad that a paper like this gets published and that this study can even get funded. It’s not science when the predictions may or may not happen.
CliSci has a bigger problem than maybe.
All that fresh water from those melting glaciers is causing the salinity of the oceans to go up.
A regional take on salinity might be interesting too:
The Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA) originally referred to an event in the late 1960s to early 1970s where a large influx of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean led to a salinity anomaly in the northern North Atlantic Ocean, which affected the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
Since then, the term “Great Salinity Anomaly” has been applied to successive occurrences of the same phenomenon, including the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1980s and the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1990s.The Great Salinity Anomalies were advective events, propagating to different sea basins and areas of the North Atlantic, and is on the decadal-scale for the anomalies in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
For the anomaly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the main cause of the anomaly was by a freshwater and sea ice pulse which came from the Arctic Ocean via the Fram Strait.
And now, we’re up for another GSA, as the Fram export was on record levels this year.
”We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. …
Changes in salinity and stratification impact the extent of deep convection and contribute to density changes in the overflow waters and the subpolar deep western boundary currents and hence the MOC.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6989661/
After the GSA in 2012-2016 we got a strong recovery in Arctic sea ice.
I suppose this recovery will continue after this years record export of freshwater through the Fram strait.
Spelling? Maybe should be –
The Great Salinity Anomalies were adjective events.
Geoff S
Mark Twain discouraged use of adjectives.
w. ==> Ocean Salinity has absolutely nothing to do with global warming or climate change or the climate crisis, of course.
And, every man jack that ever sailed the seas knows that ocean salinity is a factor that only changes on geological time scales.
Only in shallow bays and river mouths does the salinity change much from surrounding larger bodies.
Which is what you found, after a great deal of downloading and calculating and mapping.
Heaven only knows why anyone would be concerned about it — we can’t change whatever is changing it, if it is actually changing.
Kip, you post sailor facts. Alarmists don’t post facts at all.
Nice work Willis. It seems obvious to me that weasel words should not be taken as science. If a study is found to have too high a percentage of weasel words it should be returned to the authors for corrections. Certainly not published and if not corrected all funds must be returned.
How exactly does warming, if there is any, result in more salt in the ocean?
Sure, there is evaporation, but that all makes it’s way back into the ocean soon enough.
I have always wondered about salt mining for things like de-icing highways.
The amounts are ginormous, in familiar units like pounds and tons and such, and it all ends up in the ocean soon enough, but it is a lot when compared to the volume of the ocean and the amounts of salt already in ocean water?
No idea. But I did not see it mentioned by climate change salinity guy.
And he seems to be all up in a snit over some mighty small changes.
All that salt is mined from the remains of long-ago dried-up oceans and seas…mostly inland seas, I think.
But it is like fossil fuels…segregated, then dug up and used by people.
So, if it gets warm enough, maybe we will not have any highways to d-ice, and we can stop digging up huge salt deposits that almost immediately wash into the oceans.
So how again do changes in temp cause changes in salinity?
I am not buying the proposition that “Climate Change” has a single thing to do with overall salinity levels. Logically it will get saltier in some places and less salty in others, but unless the total amount of actual salt changes, it all averages out.
I’ve never seen so many subjective subjunctives in one place.