Importance of salinity measurements in the heat storage estimation from TOPEX/POSEIDON

Abstract

Sea surface height anomalies from satellite altimeter data are used to estimate heat storage. Since variability in sea surface height is mostly due to expansion and contraction of the water column it can be correlated with variations in the heat and salt content. Therefore, estimation of heat storage from altimeter data, when compared to in situ estimates, requires corrections for the haline effect. Three sites with a nearly continuous time series of temperature and salinity profiles simultaneous with TOPEX/POSEIDON data are studied: HOT, CalCOFI and Hydrostation “S”. Haline corrections based on in situ and climatological salinity measurements are contrasted. For the studied regions, the haline corrections based on climatology provide equivalent or worse results than not applying a correction at all. The use of in situ salinity estimates decreased the differences between the heat storage estimates (up to 17 × 10 7 J m −2 ) and significantly improved their correlation (up to 0.18).