Interannual trends in the Southern Ocean sea surface temperature and sea level from remote sensing data

Abstract

[1] As it was shown recently, climate changes in Antarctica resulted in interannual trends of some climatic parameters like sea level atmospheric pressure, surface air temperature, ice thickness and others. These tendencies have effect on the Southern Ocean meteorological and hydrological regime. The following remote sensing data: AVHRR MCSST data, satellite altimetry data (merged data of mission ERS-2, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, ENVISAT, GFO-1) are used to analyze the interannual and/or climatic tendency of sea surface temperature (SST) and sea level anomaly (SLA). According to the obtained results, SST has positive trend 0.01±0.005◦C yr−1 within 300–1000 km band northward of the Antarctic coast and negative trend –0.02±0.003◦C yr−1 on average for the Southern Ocean for 24-yr record (1982–2005). SLA has interannual trend 0.24±0.026 cm yr−1 for 12-yr record (1993–2005). However in some areas (for example, Pacific-Antarctic Ridge) SST and SLA tendencies are stronger –0.065±0.007◦C yr−1 and –0.21±0.05 cm yr−1, respectively. INDEX