[ecco-support] Salt/salinity budget closure in ECCO V4r4

[Anthony Meza]

Hi all,

I had a question about the salt/salinity budget closure in ECCO V4r4. The ECCO V4r4 tutorial says that "SFLUX" is total salt flux (match salt-content variations) (g/m^2/s)<https://ecco-v4-python-tutorial.readthedocs.io/ECCO_v4_Salt_and_salinity_budget.html>. However, the corresponding diagnostics document says that SFLUX is "Rate of change of total ocean salinity per m^2 accounting for mass fluxes (g/(m^2 s)<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ECCO-GROUP/ECCO-ACCESS/refs/heads/main/varlist/v4r4/v4r4_nctiles_monthly_varlist.txt>)

These are quite different. Which is accurate? Is SFLUX still appropriate for closing the salt budget, or should it have the freshwater flux component removed?

Sincerely,
Anthony


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Anthony Meza (he/him)

PhD Candidate

Physical Oceanography

MIT-WHOI Joint Program
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