Dry lands getting drier, wet getting wetter: Earth's water cycle intensifying with atmospheric warming

Dry lands getting drier, wet getting wetter: Earth's water cycle intensifying with atmospheric warming

Deploying an Argo float in the Tasman Sea. (Credit: Image courtesy of CSIRO Australia )

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2012) — A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world's oceans, signalling shifts and an acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle.

n a paper just published in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.

Lead author, Dr Paul Durack, said that by looking at observed ocean salinity changes and the relationship between salinity, rainfall and evaporation in climate models, they determined the water cycle has strengthened by four per cent from 1950-2000. This is twice the response projected by current generation global climate models