Description: All climate models predict a freshening of the North Atlantic at high latitude that may induce an abrupt change of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (hereafter AMOC) if it resides in the bistable regime, where both a strong and a weak state coexist. The latter remains uncertain as there is no consensus among observations and ocean reanalyses, where the AMOC is bistable, versus most climate models that reproduce a mono-stable strong AMOC. A series of four hindcast simulations of the global ocean at 1/12° resolution, which is presently unique, are used to diagnose freshwater transport by the AMOC in the South Atlantic, an indicator of AMOC bistability. In all simulations, the AMOC resides in the bistable regime: it exports freshwater southward in the South Atlantic, implying a positive salt advection feedback that would act to amplify a decreasing trend in subarctic deep water formation as projected in climate scenarios.

Description: Recent work suggests that changes of the Southern Hemisphere (SH) winds led to an increase in Agulhas leakage and a corresponding salinification of the Atlantic. Climate model projections for the 21st century predict a progressive southward migration and intensification of the SH westerlies. The potential effects on the ocean circulation of such an anthropogenic trend in wind stress are studied here with a high-resolution ocean model forced by a step-function change in SH wind stress that involves a 7% increase in westerlies strength and a 2° shift in the zero wind stress curl. The model simulation suggests a rapid dynamic adjustment of Agulhas leakage by 4.5 Sv, about a third of its original value, after a few years. The change in leakage is reflected in a concomitant change in the transport of the South Atlantic subtropical gyre, but leads only to a small increase in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) of O(1 Sv) after three decades. A main effect of the increasing inflow of Indian Ocean waters with potential long-term ramifications for the AMOC is the salinification and densification of upper-thermocline waters in the South Atlantic, which extends into the North Atlantic within the first three decades.

Description: Highlights: • OGCM simulations of the AMOC are highly sensitive to the subarctic freshwater forcing. • Trends in the simulated AMOC are linked to the salinity of the DSOW. • DSOW salinity trends can be traced back to the freshwater transport by the NAC. • The NAC freshwater budget is highly affected by the salinity restoring used in OGCMs. • Modifications in the subarctic precipitation can help to minimize the restoring flux. Global ocean sea-ice models with an atmospheric forcing based on bulk formulations of the air-sea fluxes exhibit spurious trends in key flow indices like the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), constraining their use in investigations of multi-decadal ocean variability. To identify the critical model factors affecting the temporal evolution of the AMOC on time scales of up to 60 years, a series of experiments with both eddy-permitting (0.25°) and non-eddying (0.5°) ocean-ice models has been performed, focusing on the influence of artificial choices for the freshwater forcing, in particular the restoring of sea surface salinity towards climatological values. The atmospheric forcing builds on the proposal for Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments (CORE), utilizing the refined atmospheric reanalysis products for 1948–2006 compiled by Large and Yeager. Sensitivity experiments with small variations in precipitation (within the observational uncertainty) and sea surface salinity restoring in the subarctic Atlantic produce a wide range of AMOC transports, between upward drifts to more than 22 Sv and nearly-collapsed states with less than 7 Sv, reflecting the excessive role of the salinity feedback in such simulations. In all cases the AMOC is tightly related to the density of the Denmark Strait overflow; changes in that density are governed by the salinity in the Nordic Seas; and in turn, that salinity is strongly affected by the properties of the inflowing North Atlantic water.

Description: Near the western boundary of the tropical North Atlantic, where the North Brazil Current (NBC) retroflects into the North Equatorial Countercurrent, large anticyclonic rings are shed. After separating from the retroflection region, the so-called NBC rings travel northwestward along the Brazilian coast, until they reach the island chain of the Lesser Antilles and disintegrate. These rings contribute substantially to the upper limb return flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation by carrying South Atlantic Water into the northern subtropical gyre. Their relevance for the northward transport of South Atlantic Water depends on the frequency of their generation as well as on their horizontal and vertical structure. The ring shedding and propagation and the complex interaction of the rings with the Lesser Antilles are investigated in the inline equation Family of Linked Atlantic Model Experiments (FLAME) model. The ring properties simulated in FLAME reach the upper limit of the observed rings in diameter and agree with recent observations on seasonal variability, which indicates a maximum shedding during the first half of the year. When the rings reach the shallow topography of the Lesser Antilles, they are trapped by the island triangle of St. Lucia, Barbados and Tobago and interact with the island chain. The model provides a resolution that is capable of resolving the complex topographic conditions at the islands and illuminates various possible fates for the water contained in the rings. It also reproduces laboratory experiments that indicate that both cyclones and anticyclones are formed after a ring passes through a topographic gap. Trajectories of artificial floats, which were inserted into the modeled velocity field, are used to investigate the pathways of the ring cores and their fate after they encounter the Lesser Antilles. The majority of the floats entered the Caribbean, while the northward Atlantic pathway was found to be of minor importance. No prominent pathway was found east of Barbados, where a ring could avoid the interaction with the islands and migrate toward the northern Lesser Antilles undisturbed.

Description: Model drift in the Labrador Sea in eddy permitting model simulations is examined using a series of configurations based on the NEMO numerical framework. There are two phases of the drift that we can identify, beginning with an initial rapid 3-year period, associated with the adjustment of the model from its initial conditions followed by an extended model drift/adjustment that continued for at least another decade. The drift controlled the model salinity in the Labrador Sea, over-riding the variability. Thus, during this initial period, similar behavior was observed between the inter-annually forced experiments as with perpetual year forcing. The results also did not depend on whether the configuration was global, or regional North Atlantic Ocean. The inclusion of an explicit sea-ice component did not seem to have a significant impact on the interior drift. Clear cut evidence for the drift having an advective nature was shown, based on two separate currents/flow regimes. We find, as expected, the representation of freshwater in the sub-polar gyre’s boundary currents important. But this study also points out another, equally important process and pathway: the input of high salinity mode water from the subtropical North Atlantic. The advective regime is dependent on the details of the model, such as the representation of the freshwater transport in the model’s East Greenland Current being very sensitive to the strength of the local sea surface salinity restoring (and the underlying field that the model is being restored to).

Description: Some studies of ocean climate model experiments suggest that regional changes in dynamic sea level could provide a valuable indicator of trends in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC). This paper describes the use of a sequence of global ocean–ice model experiments to show that the diagnosed patterns of sea surface height (SSH) anomalies associated with changes in the MOC in the North Atlantic (NA) depend critically on the time scales of interest. Model hindcast simulations for 1958–2004 reproduce the observed pattern of SSH variability with extrema occurring along the Gulf Stream (GS) and in the subpolar gyre (SPG), but they also show that the pattern is primarily related to the wind-driven variability of MOC and gyre circulation on interannual time scales; it is reflected also in the leading EOF of SSH variability over the NA Ocean, as described in previous studies. The pattern, however, is not useful as a “fingerprint” of longer-term changes in the MOC: as shown with a companion experiment, a multidecadal, gradual decline in the MOC [of 5 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) over 5 decades] induces a much broader, basin-scale SSH rise over the mid-to-high-latitude NA, with amplitudes of 20 cm. The detectability of such a trend is low along the GS since low-frequency SSH changes are effectively masked here by strong variability on shorter time scales. More favorable signal-to-noise ratios are found in the SPG and the eastern NA, where a MOC trend of 0.1 Sv yr−1 would leave a significant imprint in SSH already after about 20 years.