The overarching objective of our proposed research is to better understand the role of salinity variability in the ocean dynamics and thermodynamics and their linkage to the global hydrological…

The University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography received a $479,360 research grant from NASA (through a Civilian Shared Services Center) with a completion date of December 31, 2026. This non-set-aside award supports oceanographic research aligned with NASA's Physical Oceanography Program theme "Ocean Physics of a Warming Earth." The research focuses on understanding salinity variability in ocean dynamics and thermodynamics and its connection to the global hydrological cycle in the context of climate change. The project will utilize a decade-long time series of remotely sensed salinity data, Argo profiling float observations, cluster analysis methodology, and statistical techniques to construct salinity and temperature budgets for global ocean assessment.

The observational analysis is designed to reveal spatio-temporal characteristics of interannual salinity variability and quantify salinity's contribution to upper ocean stratification, sea level variability, ocean circulation, and associated heat and freshwater transports on a global scale. The research will provide insights into freshwater budgets, oceanic salinity influences, and coupled ocean dynamics and thermodynamics from an observational perspective. Results will contribute to improved understanding of long-term climate trends and serve as a validation dataset for climate model assessments, ultimately advancing NASA's capability to assess the ocean's physical role in the warming Earth system. Work will be performed in Venice, California at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The overarching objective of our proposed research is to better understand the role of salinity variability in the ocean dynamics and thermodynamics and their linkage to the global hydrological cycle in a warming earth system. To track these changes, we will use the now decadal-long time series of salinity and other remotely sensed data along with argo profiling float data and apply cluster analysis methodology, standard statistical techniques and construct salinity and temperature budgets. The observational analysis will reveal the spatio-temporal characteristics of the interannual salinity variability and quantify the contribution of salinity to upper ocean stratification, sea level variability, the associated ocean circulation and its heat and freshwater transports on a global scale. Our proposed research is expected to provide new insights on the freshwater budget, its influence on oceanic salinity and the associated ocean dynamics and thermodynamics from an observational perspective. Improved knowledge of this fundamental coupling of the ocean dynamics to the global hydrological cycle will serve as a building block for better assessing long-term trends in response to the continuing warming climate system, as well as provide a test-bed for assessing the veracity of climate models to reproduce the climate feedbacks. Thus, this work fits in with the scope of the NASA physical oceanography program theme ocean physics of a warming earth to explore the physical role of the ocean in the warming earth system.