Description: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) carries warm upper waters into northern high-latitudes and returns cold deep waters southward. Under anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing the AMOC is expected to weaken due to high-latitude warming and freshening. Here, we show that the sensitivity of the AMOC to an impulsive forcing at high latitudes is an oscillatory function of forcing lead time. This leads to the counter-intuitive result that a stronger AMOC can emerge as a result of, although some years after, anomalous warming at high latitudes. In our model study, there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between buoyancy forcing anomalies and AMOC variations, which retain memory of surface buoyancy fluxes in the subpolar gyre for 15-20 years. These results make it challenging to detect secular change from short observational time series

Description: Eddy momentum fluxes, i.e. Reynold stresses, are computed for the latitude bands of the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio extensions using 13 years of data from the merged satellite altimeter product of Le Traon et al. The spatial pattern and amplitude of the fluxes is remarkably similar to that found by Ducet and Le Traon using the 5 years of data that were available to them. In addition to updating the work of Ducet and Le Traon, we provide new insight into the role played by the underlying variable bottom topography, both for determining the structure of the eddy momentum fluxes seen in the satellite data and for influencing the way these fluxes feedback on the mean flow. While there is no clear evidence that eddies locally flux momentum into the eastward jets of the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio extensions, a clearer picture emerges after zonally integrating across each of the North Atlantic and North Pacific basins. We argue that the eddy momentum fluxes do indeed drive significant transport, a conclusion supported by preliminary results from a 3-D model calculation. We also present evidence that in the North Pacific, the Reynolds stresses are important for driving the recirculation gyres associated with the Kuroshio extension, taking advantage of new data from both observations and high-resolution model simulations.

Description: The ocean takes up a large fraction of the pertubation C02 that enters the atmosphere by human activity. A realistic representation of this uptake in numerical models is essential for future climate studies. Uptake of C02 or other atmospheric trace gases is strongly influenced by oceanic physical variability at spatial scales between 20 and 100 km. Our main goal is to study the effect of this mesoscale variability on the cumulative uptake of anthropogenic C02 and chlorofluorocarbons using an existing model of the ocean circulation in the Atlantic that resolves a significant part of that variability explicitly because of its grid spacing of about 20 km. Results are compared with simulated trace gas distribution obtained from a model with coarser resolution.

Description: The Labrador Sea is one of a few sites of the world ocean where open ocean deep convection occurs. Previous ocean general circulation models of the North Atlantic tend to show large deficits in simulating observed characteristics of deep water formation in the Labrador Sea. It is shown that three key processes lead to significant improvements: 1) an adequate representation of the freshwater exchange with the Nordic Seas; 2) an efficient representation of eddy fluxes between the boundary currents and the interior of the Labrador Sea; 3) low (numerical) diapycnal mixing. Based on these results, a refined eddy resolving model of the North Atlantic is developed and analyzed with respect to the important aspects of the deep water formation and its variability in the Labrador Sea. The dominant eddy kinetic energy signal is associated with the generation of well stratified ”Cape Desolation Eddies” which are not a direct result of the deep water formation process. These eddies are able to suppress deep convection in the interior of the Labrador Sea. A second type of rather unstratified ”rim current eddies” are formed during the deep convection process. Both types contribute to the restratification after convection and are important for this process to occur on observed timescales. Beside the well known correlation between surface heat flux changes and Labrador Sea Water formation, the model suggests two novel mechanisms of convection variability related to wind stress: 1) in case of enhanced wind stress the eddy kinetic energy at Cape Desolation increases. The resulting higher generation of well stratified Cape Desolation eddies leads to significantly lower Labrador Sea Water formation; 2) wind stresses parallel to the coast west of Greenland causes Ekman transports of relatively fresh and cold water off the coast towards the interior. This buoyant water at the surface stratifies the water column on the Greenland side of the Labrador Sea and suppresses deep convection.

Description: Possibilities to construct a realistic quasi-global ocean model in Boussinesq approximation with a closed energy cycle are explored in this study. In such a model, the energy related to the mean variables would interact with all parameterizedforms of energy withoutany spuriousenergy sources or sinks. This means that the energy available for interior mixing in the ocean would be only controlled by external energy input from the atmosphere and the tidal system and by internal exchanges. In the current implementation of such a consistent model, however, numerical biases and sources due to the nonlinear equation of state violate energyconservation,resultinginanoverallresidualuptoseveralpercent.Inthree(approximately)consistent model versions with different scenarios of mesoscale eddy dissipation, the parameterized internal wave field providesbetween2and3TWforinteriormixingfromthetotalexternalenergyinputofabout4TW,suchthat a transfer between 0.3 and 0.4 TW into mean potential energy contributes to drive the large-scale circulation in the model. In contrast, the wind work on the mean circulation contributes by about 1.8 TW to the large- scale circulation in all model versions. It is shown that the consistent model versions are more energetic than standard and inconsistent model versions and in better agreement with hydrographic observations.