Oceanic Influence on Global Hydrologic Cycle Observed from Space

• Main Authors: W. Timothy Liu, Xiaosu Xie, Wenqing Tang
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.379.9234; http://airsea-www.jpl.nasa.gov/publication/paper/Liu-etal-2005-igarss.pdf

The divergence of moisture transport integrated over the depth of the atmosphere over global oceans show similar geographic distribution as the surface fresh water flux (evaporationprecipitation). The temporal variations of the two terms also agree, from intraseasonal to interannual time scales, at selected locations. These two forcing terms were found to lead ocean surface salinity changes by 90 ° as expected. The interannual anomalies of the hydrologic parameters in the high latitude regions of North American and Eurasia are found the be opposite in phase, and their differences are found to have significant correlation with the moisture transport in the North Atlantic, suggesting N. Atlantic moisture transport is a bridge to the opposing hydrologic phases of the two continents. 1