Figure-7.10: Ocean salinity changes in the Atlantic Ocean off Canada’s east coast

Annual mean salinity at representative sites from five different areas off Atlantic Canada, from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) monitoring programs. The Gulf of St. Lawrence (300 m depth) long-term trend is significantly positive (1915–2016, trend 0.019 per decade, significant at 1% level), in contrast to the other sites, which all have negative trends. The decreasing trend on the Newfoundland Shelf (Station 27, 0–175 m, 1950–2016, declining trend of 0.013 per decade, significant at 5% level) is statistically different from zero. The remaining sites do not have trends that are statistically different from zero (Labrador Sea, 20–150 m, 1928–2012, declining trend of 0.005 per decade; Scotian Shelf (Emerald Basin), 1951–2016, declining trend of 0.022 per decade; Bay of Fundy, 0–90 m, 1924–2016, declining trend of 0.009 per decade).

Source

Data are from DFO monitoring programs (Hebert et al., 2016; Colbourne et al., 2017; Galbraith et al., 2017; Yashayaev and Loder, 2017).