Correlation between temperature and salinity variations as a characteristic of the North Atlantic waters

Abstract

Based on the data of deep-ocean ship observations of temperature T and salinity S, analysis is carried out of the fields of pair correlation coefficients between T and S at different depths as an additional characteristic of water masses in the layer 0-1000 m in the North Atlantic. As a result of analysis, surface, subsurface, and the upper part of North Atlantic intermediate waters are classified according to a degree of correlation between temperature and salinity. The emphasis was given to regions with low correlations, because they indicate the prevalence of the interaction processes that differ most from the typical mixing of two water masses with entirely different characteristics.

A Novel Approach for the High-Resolution Interpolation of In Situ Sea Surface Salinity

“…Such a correlation has been observed on wide regions of the global ocean, especially at midlatitudes (e.g., Aretxabaleta et al 2009). On the other hand, SST and SSS are not generally correlated near the coasts (or in small basins), where air-sea interaction can be extremely localized, and thus lead to uncoupled responses even at small scales [for a discussion on mechanisms driving T-S temporal variations see also Postnov et al (2007)]. Similar results were also found by Jones et al (1998) looking at sea surface height (SSH) and SST variability.…”