About: Great Salinity Anomaly

The Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA) originally referred to an event in the late 1960s to early 1970s where a large influx of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean led to a salinity anomaly in the northern North Atlantic Ocean, which affected the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Since then, the term "Great Salinity Anomaly" has been applied to successive occurrences of the same phenomenon, including the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1980s and the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1990s. The Great Salinity Anomalies were advective events, propagating to different sea basins and areas of the North Atlantic, and is on the decadal-scale for the anomalies in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.