Saline impact on the California current system

Abstract

There are some indications that in large measure the density anomaly field of the California Current System (CCS) follows temperature, salinity playing a significantly lesser role. These indications have been used as justification for ignoring salinity variations in dynamic models. An extensive data base of simultaneous temperature-salinity observations taken in the CCS is used to calculate and assess the saline contribution to specific volume anomaly, dynamic height, and density variance. The results show that the distribution of salinity can be important in defining the large scale circulation of the CCS, and that the local variability can be quite significant.