Isotopic evidence for an intensified hydrological cycle in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean.

ABSTRACT: The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify in a warming climate. However, observational evidence of such changes in the Southern Ocean is difficult to obtain due to sparse measurements and a complex superposition of changes in precipitation, sea ice, and glacial meltwater. Here we disentangle these signals using a dataset of salinity and seawater oxygen isotope observations collected in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean. Our results show that the atmospheric water cycle has intensified in this region between 1993 and 2021, increasing the salinity in subtropical surface waters by 0.06 ± 0.07 g kg^-1 per decade, and decreasing the salinity in subpolar surface waters by -0.02 ± 0.01 g kg^-1 per decade. The oxygen isotope data allow to discriminate the different

SUBMITTER: Akhoudas CH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10183002 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature