Salinity Interdecadal Variability in the Western Equatorial Pacific and Its Effects During 1942-2018

Abstract Ocean reanalysis products are used to examine salinity variability and its relationships with temperature in the western equatorial Pacific during 1942-2018. An ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method is adopted to separate salinity and temperature signals at different time scales; a focus is placed on interdecadal component in this study. Pronounced interdecadal variations in salinity are seen in the western equatorial Pacific, which exhibits persistent and transitional phases in association with temperature. A surface freshening is accompanied by a surface warming during the 1980s-1990s, but saltening and cooling in the 2000s, with interdecadal shifts occurring around the late 1970s, late 1990s, and in 2016-2018, respectively. Determined by anomaly signs of temperature and salinity, their combined effects can be density-compensated or density-uncompensated, acting to produce density variability that is suppressed or enhanced, respectively. The effects are phase- and region dependent. In the subsurface layers at 200m, where salinity and temperature anomalies are nearly of the same sign during interdecadal evolution, their effects are mostly density-compensated. The situation is more complicated in the surface layer. Variations in SSS and SST during the persistent phases tend to be of opposite sign with their density-uncompensated effects, acting to enhance density anomalies; but they can be of the same sign during the transitional periods, with density-compensated salinity effects. Examples are given for relationships among these fields which exhibit phase differences in anomaly transitions in the late 1990s in the western equatorial Pacific; salinity anomalies are seen to cause a delay in phase transition of density anomalies. Furthermore, their relative contributions to interdecadal variabilities of density and stratification are quantified. The consequences for salinity effects are also discussed with their feedbacks on local SST.