Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Li, F., Lozier, M. S., Bacon, S., Bower, A. S., Cunningham, S. A., de Jong, M. F., DeYoung, B., Fraser, N., Fried, N., Han, G., Holliday, N. P., Holte, J., Houpert, L., Inall, M. E., Johns, W. E., Jones, S., Johnson, C., Karstensen, J., Le Bras, I. A., P. Lherminier, X. Lin, H. Mercier, M. Oltmanns, A. Pacini, T. Petit, R. S. Pickart, D. Rayner, F. Straneo, V. Thierry, M. Visbeck, I. Yashayaev & Zhou, C. Subpolar North Atlantic western boundary density anomalies and the Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 3002, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23350-2.

Description: Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which have the potential to drive societally-important climate impacts, have traditionally been linked to the strength of deep water formation in the subpolar North Atlantic. Yet there is neither clear observational evidence nor agreement among models about how changes in deep water formation influence overturning. Here, we use data from a trans-basin mooring array (OSNAP—Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) to show that winter convection during 2014–2018 in the interior basin had minimal impact on density changes in the deep western boundary currents in the subpolar basins. Contrary to previous modeling studies, we find no discernable relationship between western boundary changes and subpolar overturning variability over the observational time scales. Our results require a reconsideration of the notion of deep western boundary changes representing overturning characteristics, with implications for constraining the source of overturning variability within and downstream of the subpolar region.

Description: We acknowledge funding from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE-1259398, OCE-1756231, OCE-1948335); the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Capability programs the Extended Ellett Line and CLASS (NE/R015953/1), and NERC grants UK-OSNAP (NE/K010875/1, NE/K010875/2, NE/K010700/1) and U.K. OSNAP Decade (NE/T00858X/1, NE/T008938/1). Additional support was received from the European Union 7th Framework Program (FP7 2007-2013) under grant 308299 (NACLIM), the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grants 727852 (Blue-Action), 862626 (EuroSea). We also acknowledge support from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography-Canada (SWOT-C), Canadian Space Agency, the Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation Services Program (ACCASP), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, an Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, and from the China’s national key research and development projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41925025) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201424001). Support for the 53°N array by the RACE program of the German Ministry BMBF is acknowledged, as is the contribution from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program.

Description: Five years of data from a line of dynamic height moorings (DHM), bottom-pressure recorders (BPR), and pressure-equipped inverted echo sounders (PIES) near the Atlantic Ocean western boundary at 26.5°N are used to evaluate the structure and variability of the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) during 2004–2009. Comparisons made between transports estimated from the DHM+BPR and those made by the PIES demonstrate that the two systems are collecting equivalent volume transport information (correlation coefficient r=0.96, root-mean-square difference=6 Sv; 1 Sv=106 m3 s−1). Integrated to ∼450 km off from the continental shelf and between 800 and 4800 dbar, the DWBC has a mean transport of approximately 32 Sv and a standard deviation during these five years of 16 Sv. Both the barotropic (full-depth vertical mean) and baroclinic flows have significant variability (changes exceeding 10 Sv) on time scales ranging from a few days to months, with the barotropic variations being larger and more energetic at all time scales. The annual cycle of the deep transport is highly dependent on the horizontal integration distance; integrating ∼100 km offshore yields an annual cycle of roughly similar magnitude but shifted in phase relative to that found from current meter arrays in the 1980–1990s, while the annual cycle becomes quite weak when integrating ∼450 km offshore. Variations in the DWBC transport far exceed those of the total basin-wide Meridional Overturning Circulation (standard deviations of 16 Sv vs. 5 Sv). Transport integrated in the deep layer out to the west side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge still demonstrates a surprisingly high variance, indicating that some compensation of the western basin deep variability must occur in the eastern basin.

Description: The use of scientific moorings is a long established method for obtaining timeseries data from the ocean, and they are often deployed for long periods at a time - sometimes for many years. As many moored instruments log data internally and are unable to transfer them to shore, moorings must be recovered for the data to be downloaded. Scientists therefore rely on not only the mooring collecting data as planned, but also the hardware surviving the deployment period. It is important to be able to predict mooring behaviour when subjected to environmental conditions at the site to ensure that they will be able to perform the required scientific tasks, such as collecting measurements at the correct depths. This paper presents the design strategy used by the Natural Environment Research Council's Rapid Climate Change Meridional Overturning Circulation (RAPID MOC) project. It discusses how the designs have evolved during subsequent deployments to improve the quality of the data collected and to reduce the risk of instrument and data loss impacting on the scientific objectives of the project.

Description: The rapid climate change programme (RAPID) has established a prototype system to continuously observe the strength and structure of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) at 26.5 degrees N. Here we provide a detailed description of the RAPID-MOC monitoring array and how it has evolved during the first four deployment years, as well as an overview of the main findings so far. The RAPID-MOC monitoring array measures: (1) Gulf Stream transport through Florida Strait by cable and repeat direct velocity measurements; (2) Ekman transports by satellite scatterometer measurements; (3) Deep Western Boundary Currents by direct velocity measurements; (4) the basin wide interior baroclinic circulation from moorings measuring vertical profiles of density at the boundaries and on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; and (5) barotropic fluctuations using bottom pressure recorders. The array became operational in late March 2004 and is expected to continue until at least 2014. The first 4 years of observations (April 2004-April 2008) have provided an unprecedented insight into the MOC structure and variability. We show that the zonally integrated meridional flow tends to conserve mass, with the fluctuations of the different transport components largely compensating at periods longer than 10 days. We take this as experimental confirmation of the monitoring strategy, which was initially tested in numerical models. The MOC at 26.5 degrees N is characterised by a large variability even on timescales as short as weeks to months. The mean maximum MOC transport for the first 4 years of observations is 18.7 Sv with a standard deviation of 4.8 Sv. The mechanisms causing the MOC variability are not yet fully understood. Part of the observed MOC variability consists of a seasonal cycle, which can be linked to the seasonal variability of the wind stress curl close to the African coast. Close to the western boundary, fluctuations in the Gulf Stream and in the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) coincide with bottom pressure variations at the western margin, thus suggesting a barotropic compensation. Ongoing and future research will put these local transport variations into a wider spatial and climatic context. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Description: Subpolar overturning in the North Atlantic Ocean shows substantial seasonality, with a maximum in late spring, a minimum in early winter, and a total range of about 9 Sv, according to observations from the OSNAP array between 2014 and 2020. Understanding the variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is essential for better predictions of our changing climate. Here we present an updated time series (August 2014 to June 2020) from the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program. The 6-year time series allows us to observe the seasonality of the subpolar overturning and meridional heat and freshwater transports. The overturning peaks in late spring and reaches a minimum in early winter, with a peak-to-trough range of 9.0 Sv. The overturning seasonal timing can be explained by winter transformation and the export of dense water, modulated by a seasonally varying Ekman transport. Furthermore, over 55% of the total meridional freshwater transport variability can be explained by its seasonality, largely owing to overturning dynamics. Our results provide the first observational analysis of seasonality in the subpolar North Atlantic overturning and highlight its important contribution to the total overturning variability observed to date.

Description: State of the climate in 2019