Ocean salinities reveal strong global water cycle intensification during 1950 to 2000.
Open accessAbstract
Fundamental thermodynamics and climate models suggest that dry regions will become drier and wet regions will become wetter in response to warming. Efforts to detect this long-term response in sparse surface observations of rainfall and evaporation remain ambiguous. We show that ocean salinity patterns express an identifiable fingerprint of an intensifying water cycle. Our 50-year observed global surface salinity changes, combined with changes from global climate models, present robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of 8 ± 5% per degree of surface warming. This rate is double the response projected by current-generation climate models and suggests that a substantial (16 to 24%) intensification of the global water cycle will occur in a future 2° to 3° warmer world.
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Significant trends in tropical Atlantic SST, surface salinity, upper-ocean heat content, winds, cloudiness, and rainfall have emerged in the past decade.
“Significant trends in tropical Atlantic SST, surface salinity, upper-ocean heat content, winds, cloudiness, and rainfall have emerged in the past decade (Tokinaga and Xie, 2011;Durack et al., 2012;Servain et al., 2014).”
From The tropical atlantic observing system (2019) · cites this paper as Durack et al., 2012
The available indexed passages are UNT Digital Library navigation and bibliographic metadata, with no paper section or page containing the findings. Searches for tropical Atlantic trends and the listed variables found no passage addressing whether significant trends emerged in the past decade. The available copy therefore cannot verify the claim. (LLM, conf=0.74)
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Current changes in tropical precipitation
Allan, R. P., Soden, B. J., John, V. O., Ingram, W., & Good, P. (2010) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/025205 · Cited by 275 · see citing works
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Tilmes, S., Fasullo, J., Lamarque, J., Marsh, D. R., Mills, M., Alterskjær, K., Muri, H., Kristjánsson, J. E., Boucher, O., Schulz, M., et al. (2013) · Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · doi:10.1002/jgrd.50868 · Cited by 318 · see citing works
The argo program: present and future.
Institution, W. H. O., Jayne, S., Roemmich, D., Zilberman, N., Riser, S., Johnson, K., Johnson, G., & Piotrowicz, S. (2017) · Oceanography · doi:10.5670/oceanog.2017.213 · Cited by 166 · see citing works
The tropical atlantic observing system
Foltz, G. R., Brandt, P., Richter, I., Rodríguez-Fonseca, B., Hernandez, F., Dengler, M., Rodrigues, R. R., Schmidt, J. O., Yu, L., Lefevre, N., et al. (2019) · Frontiers in Marine Science · doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00206 · Cited by 150 · see citing works
Siddiqui, S., Dickens, J. M., Cunningham, B. E., Hutton, S. J., Pedersen, E. I., Harper, B., Harper, S., & Brander, S. M. (2022) · Chemosphere · doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.133934 · Cited by 77 · see citing works
Cirrus cloud seeding: a climate engineering mechanism with reduced side effects?
Storelvmo, T., Boos, W. R., & Herger, N. (2014) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsta.2014.0116 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
Robustness of Competing Climatic States
Ragon, C., Lembo, V., Lucarini, V., Vérard, C., Kasparian, J., & Brunetti, M. (2022) · Journal of Climate · doi:10.1175/jcli-d-21-0148.1 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
An Investigative Analysis of Climate Change Using Historical and Modern Weather Data
Han, H., & Kurtz, R. (2013) · Journal of Emerging Investigators · doi:10.59720/13-018 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Durack, P. J., Wijffels, S. E., & Matear, R. J.
- Affiliations
- CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Durack, Paul J.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2012-04-27
- Volume
- 336
- Issue
- 6080
- Pages
- 455-458
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2048831528
- Cited by
- 1,070
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 56 · 2025: 82 · 2024: 84 · 2023: 82 · 2022: 115 · 2021: 81 · 2020: 87 · 2019: 68 · 2018: 61 · 2017: 59 · 2016: 66 · 2015: 68 · 2014: 76 · 2013: 65 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 60.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- cc-by-sa
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- eCite Digital Repository (University of Tasmania) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Oceanography › Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Keywords
- ocean salinity, climate change, surface warming, evaporation, rainfall, climate model projections, aridity, wet regions
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