From small whirls to the global ocean: how eddies affect the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Katsman ◽  
Nils Brüggemann ◽  
Sotiria Georgiou ◽  
Juan-Manuel Sayol Espana ◽  
Stefanie Ypma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
Meridional Overturning Circulation ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Boundary Current ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Density Space

<p>In the North Atlantic Ocean, intense downward motions connect the upper and lower limbs of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). In addition, the AMOC also displays a pronounced signature in density space, with lighter waters moving northward and denser waters returning southward.</p><p>While at first glance it is appealing to associate this sinking of water masses in the North Atlantic Ocean with the occurrence of the formation of dense water masses by deep convection, this is not correct: the net vertical motion over convection areas is small. The downward flow required to connect the upper and lower branches of the AMOC thus has to occur outside the deep convection areas. Indeed, earlier studies have pointed out theoretically that strong sinking can only occur close to continental boundaries, where ageostrophic processes play a role. However, observations clearly indicate that convected water masses formed in marginals seas constitute an important component of the lower limb of the AMOC.</p><p>This apparent contradiction is explored in this presentation, by studying the overturning in the AMOC from a perspective in depth space (Eulerian downwelling) and density space (downwelling across isopycnals). Based on analyses of both a high-resolution global ocean model and dedicated process studies using idealized models we analyze the characteristics of the sinking, of diapycnal mixing, and investigate how these are linked. </p><p>It appears that eddies play a crucial role for the overturning, both in depth space and density space. They control the characteristics of the yearly cycle of convection and restratification, the magnitude of the Eulerian sinking near continental boundaries, and steer the export of dense waters formed in the interior of the marginal seas via the boundary current system.</p><p>These studies thus reveal a complex three-dimensional view on sinking, diapycnal water mass transformation and overturning in the North Atlantic Ocean, involving the boundary current, the interior and interactions with the eddy field.  This implies that it is essential to resolve these eddies to be able to properly represent the overturning in depth and density space in the North Atlantic Ocean and its response to changing conditions in a future climate.</p>

scholarly journals Distinct flavobacterial communities in contrasting water masses of the North Atlantic Ocean

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 472-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola R Gómez-Pereira ◽  
Bernhard M Fuchs ◽  
Cecilia Alonso ◽  
Matthew J Oliver ◽  
Justus E E van Beusekom ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

scholarly journals Predictability and Decadal Variability of the North Atlantic Ocean State Evaluated from a Realistic Ocean Model

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 477-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Sévellec ◽  
Alexey V. Fedorov
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Sea Surface Temperature ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Decadal Variability ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Meridional Overturning Circulation ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

This study investigates the excitation of decadal variability and predictability of the ocean climate state in the North Atlantic. Specifically, initial linear optimal perturbations (LOPs) in temperature and salinity that vary with depth, longitude, and latitude are computed, and the maximum impact on the ocean of these perturbations is evaluated in a realistic ocean general circulation model. The computations of the LOPs involve a maximization procedure based on Lagrange multipliers in a nonautonomous context. To assess the impact of these perturbations four different measures of the North Atlantic Ocean state are used: meridional volume and heat transports (MVT and MHT) and spatially averaged sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean heat content (OHC). It is shown that these metrics are dramatically different with regard to predictability. Whereas OHC and SST can be efficiently modified only by basin-scale anomalies, MVT and MHT are also strongly affected by smaller-scale perturbations. This suggests that instantaneous or even annual-mean values of MVT and MHT are less predictable than SST and OHC. Only when averaged over several decades do the former two metrics have predictability comparable to the latter two, which highlights the need for long-term observations of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in order to accumulate climatically relevant data. This study also suggests that initial errors in ocean temperature of a few millikelvins, encompassing both the upper and deep ocean, can lead to ~0.1-K errors in the predictions of North Atlantic sea surface temperature on interannual time scales. This transient error growth peaks for SST and OHC after about 6 and 10 years, respectively, implying a potential predictability barrier.

Distribution and behavior of anthropogenic129I in water masses ventilating the North Atlantic Ocean

2001 ◽  
Vol 106 (C4) ◽  
pp. 6881-6894 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. N. Edmonds ◽  
Z. Q. Zhou ◽  
G. M. Raisbeck ◽  
F. Yiou ◽  
L. Kilius ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
And Behavior

AMOC response to changing resolution in the Finite-volumE Sea ice–Ocean Model

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Sidorenko ◽  
Sergey Danilov ◽  
Nikolay Koldunov ◽  
Patrick Scholz
Keyword(s):  
Sea Ice ◽  
Finite Volume ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
Meridional Overturning Circulation ◽  
Meridional Transport ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

<p>The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the most common diagnostics of numerical simulations. Generally it is computed as a streamfunction of zonally averaged flow along the constant depth. More rarely it is computed as zonally averaged along constant isopycnals. The latter computation, however, allows one to better distinguish between water masses and physical processes contributing to the meridional transport. We analyze the AMOC in global simulations based on the Finite-volumE Sea ice–Ocean Model (FESOM 2.0) using eddy permitting to eddy resolving configurations in the North Atlantic. We (1) split the AMOC computed in density space into the constitutes induced by surface buoyancy fluxes and cross isopycnal transformations, (2) identify the water masses which contribute to the formation of the North Atlantic Deep Water and (3) study the AMOC response to the permitting or resolving eddies in the North Atlantic ocean.</p>

scholarly journals The silicon stable isotope distribution along the GEOVIDE section (GEOTRACES GA-01) of the North Atlantic Ocean

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (18) ◽  
pp. 5663-5676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill N. Sutton ◽  
Gregory F. de Souza ◽  
Maribel I. García-Ibáñez ◽  
Christina L. De La Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
Labrador Sea ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
Eastern North Atlantic

Abstract. The stable isotope composition of dissolved silicon in seawater (δ30SiDSi) was examined at 10 stations along the GEOVIDE section (GEOTRACES GA-01), spanning the North Atlantic Ocean (40–60∘ N) and Labrador Sea. Variations in δ30SiDSi below 500 m were closely tied to the distribution of water masses. Higher δ30SiDSi values are associated with intermediate and deep water masses of northern Atlantic or Arctic Ocean origin, whilst lower δ30SiDSi values are associated with DSi-rich waters sourced ultimately from the Southern Ocean. Correspondingly, the lowest δ30SiDSi values were observed in the deep and abyssal eastern North Atlantic, where dense southern-sourced waters dominate. The extent to which the spreading of water masses influences the δ30SiDSi distribution is marked clearly by Labrador Sea Water (LSW), whose high δ30SiDSi signature is visible not only within its region of formation within the Labrador and Irminger seas, but also throughout the mid-depth western and eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Both δ30SiDSi and hydrographic parameters document the circulation of LSW into the eastern North Atlantic, where it overlies southern-sourced Lower Deep Water. The GEOVIDE δ30SiDSi distribution thus provides a clear view of the direct interaction between subpolar/polar water masses of northern and southern origin, and allow examination of the extent to which these far-field signals influence the local δ30SiDSi distribution.

scholarly journals Effect of gas-transfer velocity parameterization choice on air–sea CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes in the North Atlantic Ocean and the European Arctic

Ocean Science ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1091-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iwona Wrobel ◽  
Jacek Piskozub
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Gas Transfer ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Transfer Velocity ◽  
The North ◽  
European Arctic ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract. The oceanic sink of carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important part of the global carbon budget. Understanding uncertainties in the calculation of this net flux into the ocean is crucial for climate research. One of the sources of the uncertainty within this calculation is the parameterization chosen for the CO2 gas-transfer velocity. We used a recently developed software toolbox, called the FluxEngine (Shutler et al., 2016), to estimate the monthly air–sea CO2 fluxes for the extratropical North Atlantic Ocean, including the European Arctic, and for the global ocean using several published quadratic and cubic wind speed parameterizations of the gas-transfer velocity. The aim of the study is to constrain the uncertainty caused by the choice of parameterization in the North Atlantic Ocean. This region is a large oceanic sink of CO2, and it is also a region characterized by strong winds, especially in winter but with good in situ data coverage. We show that the uncertainty in the parameterization is smaller in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic than in the global ocean. It is as little as 5 % in the North Atlantic and 4 % in the European Arctic, in comparison to 9 % for the global ocean when restricted to parameterizations with quadratic wind dependence. This uncertainty becomes 46, 44, and 65 %, respectively, when all parameterizations are considered. We suggest that this smaller uncertainty (5 and 4 %) is caused by a combination of higher than global average wind speeds in the North Atlantic (> 7 ms−1) and lack of any seasonal changes in the direction of the flux direction within most of the region. We also compare the impact of using two different in situ pCO2 data sets (Takahashi et al. (2009) and Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) v1.5 and v2.0, for the flux calculation. The annual fluxes using the two data sets differ by 8 % in the North Atlantic and 19 % in the European Arctic. The seasonal fluxes in the Arctic computed from the two data sets disagree with each other possibly due to insufficient spatial and temporal data coverage, especially in winter.

scholarly journals Mapping the Energy Cascade in the North Atlantic Ocean: The Coarse-Graining Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Aluie ◽  
Matthew Hecht ◽  
Geoffrey K. Vallis
Keyword(s):  
Energy Transfer ◽  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Coarse Graining ◽  
Energy Scale ◽  
Energy Cascade ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

AbstractA coarse-graining framework is implemented to analyze nonlinear processes, measure energy transfer rates, and map out the energy pathways from simulated global ocean data. Traditional tools to measure the energy cascade from turbulence theory, such as spectral flux or spectral transfer, rely on the assumption of statistical homogeneity or at least a large separation between the scales of motion and the scales of statistical inhomogeneity. The coarse-graining framework allows for probing the fully nonlinear dynamics simultaneously in scale and in space and is not restricted by those assumptions. This paper describes how the framework can be applied to ocean flows. Energy transfer between scales is not unique because of a gauge freedom. Here, it is argued that a Galilean-invariant subfilter-scale (SFS) flux is a suitable quantity to properly measure energy scale transfer in the ocean. It is shown that the SFS definition can yield answers that are qualitatively different from traditional measures that conflate spatial transport with the scale transfer of energy. The paper presents geographic maps of the energy scale transfer that are both local in space and allow quasi-spectral, or scale-by-scale, dynamics to be diagnosed. Utilizing a strongly eddying simulation of flow in the North Atlantic Ocean, it is found that an upscale energy transfer does not hold everywhere. Indeed certain regions near the Gulf Stream and in the Equatorial Countercurrent have a marked downscale transfer. Nevertheless, on average an upscale transfer is a reasonable mean description of the extratropical energy scale transfer over regions of O(103) km in size.

scholarly journals Simulated Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation during the Holocene

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (20) ◽  
pp. 6989-7002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Wei ◽  
Gerrit Lohmann
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Surface Temperature ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Meridional Overturning Circulation ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) and its possible change during the Holocene are examined in this study, using long-term simulations of the earth system model Community Earth System Models (COSMOS). A quasi-persistent ~55–80-yr cycle characterizing in the North Atlantic sea surface temperature is highly associated with the multidecadal variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) during the Holocene. This mode can be found throughout the Holocene, indicating that the AMO is dominated by internal climate variability. Stronger-than-normal AMOC results in warmer-than-normal surface temperature spreading over almost the whole North Hemisphere, in particular the North Atlantic Ocean. During the warm phase of the AMO, more precipitation is detected in the North Atlantic low and high latitudes. It also generates a dipolar seesaw pattern in the sea ice anomaly. The results reveal that the influence of the AMO can be amplified by a more vigorous AMOC variability during the early Holocene in the presence of a remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and when freshwater entered the North Atlantic Ocean. This conclusion could have potential application for the past AMO reconstruction and the future AMO estimation.

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