Changing Ocean Salt Concentrations Confirm That Warming Is Speeding Up Earth's Water Cycle
New mapping of salt concentrations in the world's oceans confirms what physics and climate models have long suggested: Global warming is intensifying Earth's water cycle, speeding up the rate at which water evaporates in one area and falls as rain or snow somewhere else. That intensification has enormous implications because it worsens droughts and increases extreme rainstorms and flooding. But it has been hard to measure, because data is sparse across vast expanses of the oceans, which cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface.
A study published Sept. 9 in the Journal of Climate, however, paints a much clearer picture of how much, and exactly where, the water cycle is changing, by tracking how salt concentrations have changed in the oceans over the last 50 years. Those measurements act like a giant rain gauge for the oceans, said co-author Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Trenberth linked the findings to recent extreme wildfires and droughts in California and Australia. "The wildfires keep getting worse as the dry areas get drier," he said. "This year it's California, last year it was Australia. As the pattern persists, that's when the chances increase for the effects to really accumulate and do damage. It's very easy to say this is weather, this is just one event, but the study shows it's part of a bigger pattern."
The areas that are getting saltier show where there has been less rain and more evaporation, increasing the salt concentration, while the areas that are getting fresher are those getting more rain, diluting the saltiness. That affects land areas, too, because the storms and weather patterns that form over oceans eventually pass over the continents.
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