schmidt-christina
commented
1 year ago The results of the salt advection on the shelf are a bit confusing. In my last project, I could show that there is a correlation of salt advection on the shelf across 165W and salinity in the western Ross Sea of 0.67 with the salt advection leading a few months.
I calculate the salt advection as the zonal difference between the salinity either side of 165W multiplied by the transport across 165W (defined as positive when westwards into the Ross Sea).
The hypothesis would be that in periods of high salinity in the Ross Sea the salt advection would also be higher than average. But I actually find the opposite:
The salt advection is weaker in the periods of high salinity (top panel). I tried to break that up into the salinity gradient (middle) and transport (bottom) across the section and the transport is always positive (westwards) and the salinity gradient negative in the 3 periods meaning that fresher water is advected westwards across the section.
I haven't looked more into that yet and was wondering whether the salinity gradient just reflects the state of saltier waters in the Ross Sea?
compare salt advection into Ross Sea in periods of high and low salinity