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The regional sea level budget and interannual sea level changes around Taiwan and Philippines are studied using altimetry, GRACE, and in-situ hydrographic data during 1993‒2021. Results show that the average sea level trend around Taiwan and Philippines during 1993–2021 derived from the altimetric data is 3.6 ± 0.2 mm/yr. Over 2002–2021, the study shows closure of sea level budget in the eastern ocean of Taiwan and Philippines within the observed data uncertainties, and the ocean mass accounts for 88%–100% of the observed sea level rise. In contrast, the sea level budget is not closed in the western ocean of Taiwan and Philippines, probably due to the lack of complete coverage by in-situ ocean observing systems. In addition, both regional sea level anomalies and their steric component around Taiwan and Philippines exhibit pronounced interannual and decadal variabilities. The trade wind stress associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation offers a compelling explanation for the interannual and decadal signals of sea level anomalies in the southern ocean of Taiwan, with negative correlations of − 0.78 to − 0.64, indicating that trade wind stress makes a negative contribution to interannual-to-decadal sea level variability. In the northwestern ocean of Taiwan, the sea level variation is strongly influenced by the local monsoon system and shallow bathymetry with an annual amplitude of 90.3 ± 2.9 mm, larger than those in other regions around Taiwan and Philippines, where ocean mass is dominant with a high correlation with the sea level (+ 0.75 to + 0.78).

The anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean. During the first part of the 2000s, the gyre intensified, expanded and accumulated freshwater. Using an extensive hydrographic dataset from 2003 to 2019, together with updated satellite dynamic ocean topography data, we find that over the past decade the Beaufort Gyre has transitioned to a quasi-stable state in which the increase in sea surface height of the gyre has slowed and the freshwater content has plateaued. In addition, the cold halocline layer, which isolates the warm/salty Atlantic water at depth, has thinned significantly due to less input of cold and salty water stemming from the Pacific Ocean and the Chukchi Sea shelf, together with greater entrainment of lighter water from the eastern Beaufort Sea. This recent transition of the Beaufort Gyre is associated with a southeastward shift in its location as a result of variation in the regional wind forcing. Our results imply that continued thinning of the cold halocline layer could modulate the present stable state, allowing for a freshwater release. This, in turn, could freshen the subpolar North Atlantic, impacting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.The Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre has transitioned to a state where the freshwater content has plateaued and the cold halocline layer has thinned, as a result of variation in the regional wind forcing.

Mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has increased over the past two decades, currently accounting for 25% of global sea-level rise. This is due to increased surface melt driven by atmospheric warming and the retreat and acceleration of marine-terminating glaciers forced by oceanic heat transport. We use ship-based profiles, bathymetric data and moored time series from 2016 to 2017 of temperature, salinity and water velocity collected in front of the floating tongue of the 79 North Glacier in Northeast Greenland. These observations indicate that a year-round bottom-intensified inflow of warm Atlantic Water through a narrow channel is constrained by a sill. The associated heat transport leads to a mean melt rate of 10.4 ± 3.1 m yr–1 on the bottom of the floating glacier tongue. The interface height between warm Atlantic Water and colder overlying water above the sill controls the ocean heat transport’s temporal variability. Historical hydrographic data show that the interface height has risen over the past two decades, implying an increase in the basal melt rate. Additional temperature profiles at the neighbouring Zachariæ Isstrøm suggest that ocean heat transport here is similarly controlled by a near-glacier sill. We conclude that near-glacier, sill-controlled ocean heat transport plays a crucial role for glacier stability.Ocean heat transport underneath the floating tongue of 79 North Glacier, Greenland, is controlled by a sill in the inflow channel, according to ship-based and mooring data as well as bathymetric data.

This study extends recent ocean reanalysis comparisons to explore improvements to several next-generation products, the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation, version 3 (SODA3); the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, version 4, release 3 (ECCO4r3); and the Ocean Reanalysis System 5 (ORAS5), during their 23-yr period of overlap (1993–2015). The three reanalyses share similar historical hydrographic data, but the forcings, forward models, estimation algorithms, and bias correction methods are different. The study begins by comparing the reanalyses to independent analyses of historical SST, heat, and salt content, as well as examining the analysis-minus-observation misfits. While the misfits are generally small, they still reveal some systematic biases that are not present in the reference Hadley Center EN4 objective analysis. We next explore global trends in temperature averaged into three depth intervals: 0–300, 300–1000, and 1000–2000 m. We find considerable similarity in the spatial structure of the trends and their distribution among different ocean basins; however, the trends in global averages do differ by 30%–40%, which implies an equivalent level of disagreement in net surface heating rates. ECCO4r3 is distinct in having quite weak warming trends while ORAS5 has stronger trends that are noticeable in the deeper layers. To examine the performance of the reanalyses in the Arctic we explore representation of Atlantic Water variability on the Atlantic side of the Arctic and upper-halocline freshwater storage on the Pacific side of the Arctic. These comparisons are encouraging for the application of ocean reanalyses to track ocean climate variability and change at high northern latitudes.

The ocean off the Sanriku coast, Japan, where the Kuroshio Extension (KE) meets the Oyashio, has unique dynamics and hosts rich marine resources. Since April 2023, the KE, typically flowing eastward around 36°N, exhibited an extreme northward meander, reaching 40°N by the winter of 2024. An anticyclonic eddy pinched off from the KE’s northern edge in late May 2024. The Japan Meteorological Agency conducted hydrographic surveys that cross this eddy and the KE along about 145°E in late May 2024. The hydrographic data revealed that thick warm-salty subtropical water replaced the cold-fresh subarctic water off the Sanriku coast, with temperatures 10 °C warmer at depths of 50–400 dbar compared to past decades. The Subtropical Mode Water, characterized by vertical uniformity, existed north of 40°N, more than 500 km further north of its conventional distribution area. From April 2023 to August 2024, satellite data indicated record-high sea surface temperature off the Sanriku coast (+ 4.9 °C), with intense marine heatwave conditions almost every day. In the winter of 2024, over the very warm ocean off the Sanriku coast, 300 W m –2 more heat than usual in the form of turbulent heat flux was released from the ocean to the atmosphere, and air temperature and humidity increased up to around 800 hPa level, from atmospheric reanalysis data. In addition to monitoring these unprecedented ocean conditions off the Sanriku coast, it is important to assess their impact on the marine environment, fisheries, and, ultimately, the local economy.

The Labrador Sea is a key formation site for dense waters that contribute to the lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Recent observations have revealed a distinctly weak overturning in this basin, attributed to compensating effects of temperature and salinity anomalies on density. However, it remains unclear whether these effects are consistent under varying hydrographic conditions and whether they subsequently impact overturning variability. By combining moored observations and historical hydrographic data, we demonstrate a coherent response of the Labrador Sea overturning to salinity anomalies over recent decades. Notably, a strengthened overturning in the late 2010s can be attributed to subsurface fresh anomalies advected into the basin by the boundary currents, which are linked to large‐scale freshening that began in the late 2000s. Our findings underscore the necessity of continuously monitoring boundary salinity and temperature anomalies to capture ongoing changes in the Labrador Sea.

Understanding of the three-dimensional circulation in the South China Sea (SCS) is crucial for determining the transports of water masses, energy, and biogeochemical substances in the regional and adjacent larger oceans. The circulation’s kinematic and dynamic natures, however, are largely unclear. Results from a three-dimensional numerical ocean circulation model and geostrophic currents, derived from hydrographic data, reveal the existence of a unique, three-layer, cyclonic–anticyclonic–cyclonic (CAC) circulation in the upper (<750 m), middle (750–1500 m), and deep (>1500 m) layers in the SCS with differing seasonality. An inflow–outflow–inflow structure in Luzon Strait largely induces the CAC circulation, which leads to vortex stretching in the SCS basin because of a lateral planetary vorticity flux in each of the respective layers. The formation of joint effects of baroclinicity and relief (JEBAR) is an intrinsic dynamic response to the CAC circulation. The JEBAR arises from the CAC flow–topography interaction in the SCS.

Two interpolation methods are presented, both of which use multiple Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomials (PCHIPs). The first method is based on performing 16 PCHIPs on 8 rotated versions of the plot of the data versus an independent variable (such as pressure or time). These 16 PCHIPs are then used to form 8 interpolations of the original data, and finally, these 8 are averaged. When the original data are unevenly spaced with respect to the independent variable, we show that it is best to perform the Multiply-Rotated PCHIP (MR-PCHIP) method using the “data index” as the independent variable, and then to subsequently perform one last PCHIP of the data index with respect to the original independent variable. This MR-PCHIP method avoids the flat spots that are a feature of the PCHIP method when the data have multiple values approximately equal to a local extreme value. The MR-PCHIP interpolated data have continuous first derivatives at the data points. This method also avoids the unrealistic overshoots that can occur when using the standard cubic spline interpolation procedure. The second interpolation method is designed specifically for hydrographic data with the aim of minimizing the formation of unrealistic water masses by the interpolation procedure. This is achieved by applying a Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomial to each of 8 rotations of the salinity versus temperature plot (Multiply-Rotated Salinity–Temperature PCHIP, MRST-PCHIP) with bottle number (that is, data index) as the vertical interpolating coordinate, thereby making the MRST-PCHIP method independent of the heave of a water column. This method is equivalent to interpolating in the salinity–temperature diagram, and MRST-PCHIP proves very effective at avoiding the production of anomalous water masses that otherwise occur when interpolating temperature and salinity separately.

The recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission is expected to provide transformative observations of water surface elevation, width, and slope and produce derived estimates of discharge for global rivers along rivers in the SWOT River Database (SWORD). However, the hydrographic representation of rivers in SWORD differs from hydrography data sets commonly used for modeling purposes, such as Multi-Error-Removed Improved Terrain (MERIT)-Basins. Here, we develop links between the river networks of SWORD and MERIT-Basins (MB) to enable interoperability between SWOT data products and hydrologic modeling frameworks. This data set, termed MERIT-SWORD, identifies a subset of ∼277,000 global MB river reaches that most closely represent the location and extent of the SWORD river network and establishes bidirectional, one-to-many translations between reaches in the two hydrographic data sets. The MERIT-SWORD data set serves to unite SWOT observations with river routing models, allowing for the seamless and standardized assimilation of SWOT vector products into global river simulations and the provision of improved a priori discharge estimates for SWOT discharge computation. Plain Language SummaryThe Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission observes the water surface elevation, width, and slope of river reaches described in the SWOT River Database (SWORD). The location and extent of rivers in SWORD differ considerably from other river network data sets that are commonly used for hydrological modeling such as Multi-Error-Removed Improved Terrain (MERIT)-Basins. Here, we present and publicly share the MERIT-SWORD data set which links rivers in SWORD to rivers in MERIT-Basins (MB), and vice versa. These links between river reaches in the two data sets can allow for model simulations to be used as a first guess for SWOT measurements, and for observations from SWOT to be easily transferred to hydrologic modeling frameworks based on the MB river network for data assimilation.

The seasonal variations and the interactions of the water masses in the tropical Pacific off central Mexico (TPCM) and four surrounding areas were examined based on an extensive new hydrographic database. The regional water masses were redefined in terms of absolute salinity ( S A ) and conservative temperature (Θ) according to the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater 2010 (TEOS-10). Hydrographic data and the evaporation minus (precipitation + runoff) balance were used to investigate the origin and seasonality of two salinity minima in the area. The shallow (50–100 m) salinity minimum originates with the California Current System and becomes saltier as it extends southeastward and mixes with tropical subsurface waters while the surface salinity minimum extends farther north in the TPCM in summer and fall because of the northward advection of tropical surface waters. The interactions between water masses allow a characterization of the seasonal pattern of circulation of the Mexican Coastal Current (MCC), the tropical branch of the California Current, and the flows through the entrance of the Gulf of California. The seasonality of the MCC inferred from the distribution of the water masses largely coincides with the geostrophic circulation forced by an annual Rossby wave.