While the global mean sea level has been rising rapidly, the regional sea level changes could show large deviations from the global mean. The large-scale distributions of projected regional sea level changes are dominated by the ocean dynamic sea level, reflecting the response of heat, salt, and mass redistributions to the anthropogenic climate change. In this study we focus on the regional contributions of salinity-driven halosteric changes. We first examine the relative role of thermosteric and halosteric sea level in regional dynamic sea level changes, based on CMIP multi-model simulations and a series of global ocean model experiments in which surface heat flux, freshwater flux, and wind stress perturbations are applied individually or simultaneously. Furthermore, we analyze changes in meridional ocean salt transport, for the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific basins separately, to understand regional ocean salt content changes.

regional sea level,halosteric,ocean salt content,global ocean model