The assessment of salinity impact on surface water mass transformation in the North Atlantic

Abstract

Abstract In this study, we investigate sensitivity of total surface water transformation to salinity from different data sources. Here we use surface salinity from NCEP CFSv2 reanalysis, GLORYS ocean reanalysis, Aquarius satellite data and ISAS-15 (product of optimal interpolation of ARGO buoys) as well as heat and freshwater fluxes from NCEP CFSv2 reanalysis. The largest spread in estimates of salinity is observed for Aquarius satellite in subpolar regions. The best correspondence between transformation computed using salinity from different datasets is observed for subtropical waters. Model-based products (CFSv2 and GLORYS) are the most consistent in estimates of surface water transformation and the largest discrepancies between these datasets are observed in the regions with high freshwater fluxes.