Startling signs that global warming is changing patterns of rain, snow and ocean currents that drive the climate system were reported Wednesday by scientists monitoring the ocean's saltiness.
According to oceanographer Ruth Curry, sea surface waters in tropical regions have become dramatically saltier over the past 50 years, while surface waters at high latitudes, in Arctic regions, have become much fresher. These changes in salinity seem to have accelerated in the 1990s.
'This is the signature of increasing evaporation and precipitation' occurring because of warming, Curry said, 'and a sign of melting ice at the poles. These are consequences of global warming, either natural, human-caused or, more likely, both.' These changes in saltiness reflect increased seawater evaporation in the warm tropical regions, leaving the surface water saltier. The increased evaporation leads to increased rainfall and snowfall -- plus more ice melting -- dumping fresher water at the poles.
Curry, a research scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, published the result with two colleagues Wednesday in the journal Nature. Her co-workers were Bob Dickson of the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture in Lowestoft, England and Igor Yashayaev, at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia. Their data came from more than 40 years of salinity measurements taken in the Atlantic, between Iceland in the north and the tip of South America."
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