4.7 Article

Sinking of Dense North Atlantic Waters in a Global Ocean Model: Location and Controls

期刊

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-OCEANS
卷 123, 期 5, 页码 3563-3576

出版社

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2017JC013329

关键词

ocean circulation; climate

资金

  1. NWO (Netherlands Scientific Research foundation) VIDI [864.13.011]
  2. NWO program Feedbacks in the Climate System
  3. National Science Foundation [OCE-1534618, OCE-1558742]
  4. Directorate For Geosciences
  5. Division Of Ocean Sciences [1534618] Funding Source: National Science Foundation

向作者/读者索取更多资源

We investigate the characteristics of the sinking of dense waters in the North Atlantic Ocean that constitute the downwelling limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as simulated by two global ocean models: an eddy-permitting model at 1/4 degrees resolution and its coarser 1 degrees counterpart. In line with simple geostrophic considerations, it is shown that the sinking predominantly occurs in a narrow region close to the continental boundary in both model simulations. That is, the regions where convection is deepest do not coincide with regions where most dense waters sink. The amount of near-boundary sinking that occurs varies regionally. For the 1/4 degrees resolution model, these variations are in quantitative agreement with a relation based on geostrophy and a thermodynamic balance between buoyancy loss and alongshore advection of density, which links the amount of sinking to changes in density along the edge of the North Atlantic Ocean. In the 1 degrees model, the amount and location of sinking appears not to be governed by this simple relation, possibly due to the large impact of overflows and nonnegligible cross-shore density advection. If this poor representation of the processes governing the sinking of dense waters in the North Atlantic Ocean is a generic feature of such low-resolution models, the response of the AMOC to changes in climate simulated by this type of models needs to be evaluated with care.

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