Ocean salinities reveal strong global water cycle intensification during 1950 to 2000
Durack, P.J., S.E. Wijffels, and R.J. Matear, 2012: “Ocean salinities reveal strong global water cycle intensification during 1950 to 2000.” Science, v. 336, doi: 10.1126/science.1212222.
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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