Description: Decadal variabilities in Indian Ocean subsurface ocean heat content (OHC; 50–300 m) since the 1950s are examined using ocean reanalyses. This study elaborates on how Pacific variability modulates the Indian Ocean on decadal time scales through both oceanic and atmospheric pathways. High correlations between OHC and thermocline depth variations across the entire Indian Ocean Basin suggest that OHC variability is primarily driven by thermocline fluctuations. The spatial pattern of the leading mode of decadal Indian Ocean OHC variability closely matches the regression pattern of OHC on the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), emphasizing the role of the Pacific Ocean in determining Indian Ocean OHC decadal variability. Further analyses identify different mechanisms by which the Pacific influences the eastern and western Indian Ocean. IPO-related anomalies from the Pacific propagate mainly through oceanic pathways in the Maritime Continent to impact the eastern Indian Ocean. By contrast, in the western Indian Ocean, the IPO induces wind-driven Ekman pumping in the central Indian Ocean via the atmospheric bridge, which in turn modifies conditions in the southwestern Indian Ocean via westward-propagating Rossby waves. To confirm this, a linear Rossby wave model is forced with wind stresses and eastern boundary conditions based on reanalyses. This linear model skillfully reproduces observed sea surface height anomalies and highlights both the oceanic connection in the eastern Indian Ocean and the role of wind-driven Ekman pumping in the west. These findings are also reproduced by OGCM hindcast experiments forced by interannual atmospheric boundary conditions applied only over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, respectively.

Description: Benthic storms are important for both the energy budget of the ocean and for sediment resuspension and transport. Using 30 years of output from a high-resolution model of the North Atlantic, it is found that most of the benthic storms in the model occur near the western boundary in association with the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current, in regions that are generally co-located with the peak near-bottom eddy kinetic energy. A common feature are meander troughs in the near-surface jets that are accompanied by deep low pressure anomalies spinning up deep cyclones with near-bottom velocities of up to more than 0.5 m/s. A case study of one of these events shows the importance of both baroclinic and barotropic instability of the jet, with energy being extracted from the jet in the upstream part of the meander trough and partly returned to the jet in the downstream part of the meander trough. This motivates examining the 30-year time mean of the energy transfer from the (annual mean) background flow into the eddy kinetic energy. This quantity is shown to be co-located well with the region in which benthic storms and large increases in deep cyclonic relative vorticity occur most frequently, suggesting an important role for mixed barotropic-baroclinic instability driven cyclogenesis in generating benthic storms throughout the model simulation. Regions of largest energy transfer and most frequent benthic storms are found to be the Gulf Stream west of the New England Seamounts and the North Atlantic Current near Flemish Cap.

Description: Ocean acidification has emerged over the last two decades as one of the largest threats to marine organisms and ecosystems. However, most research efforts on ocean acidification have so far neglected management and related policy issues to focus instead on understanding its ecological and biogeochemical implications. This shortfall is addressed here with a systematic, international and critical review of management and policy options. In particular, we investigate the assumption that fighting acidification is mainly, but not only, about reducing CO2 emissions, and explore the leeway that this emerging problem may open in old environmental issues. We review nine types of management responses, initially grouped under four categories: preventing ocean acidification; strengthening ecosystem resilience; adapting human activities; and repairing damages. Connecting and comparing options leads to classifying them, in a qualitative way, according to their potential and feasibility. While reducing CO2 emissions is confirmed as the key action that must be taken against acidification, some of the other options appear to have the potential to buy time, e.g. by relieving the pressure of other stressors, and help marine life face unavoidable acidification. Although the existing legal basis to take action shows few gaps, policy challenges are significant: tackling them will mean succeeding in various areas of environmental management where we failed to a large extent so far.

Description: The recent increase in the rate of the Greenland ice sheet melting has raised with urgency the question of the impact of such a melting on the climate. As former model projections, based on a coarse representation of the melting, show very different sensitivity to this melting, it seems necessary to consider a multi-model ensemble to tackle this question. Here we use five coupled climate models and one ocean-only model to evaluate the impact of 0.1 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3/s) of freshwater equally distributed around the coast of Greenland during the historical era 1965–2004. The ocean-only model helps to discriminate between oceanic and coupled responses. In this idealized framework, we find similar fingerprints in the fourth decade of hosing among the models, with a general weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Initially, the additional freshwater spreads along the main currents of the subpolar gyre. Part of the anomaly crosses the Atlantic eastward and enters into the Canary Current constituting a freshwater leakage tapping the subpolar gyre system. As a consequence, we show that the AMOC weakening is smaller if the leakage is larger. We argue that the magnitude of the freshwater leakage is related to the asymmetry between the subpolar-subtropical gyres in the control simulations, which may ultimately be a primary cause for the diversity of AMOC responses to the hosing in the multi-model ensemble. Another important fingerprint concerns a warming in the Nordic Seas in response to the re-emergence of Atlantic subsurface waters capped by the freshwater in the subpolar gyre. This subsurface heat anomaly reaches the Arctic where it emerges and induces a positive upper ocean salinity anomaly by introducing more Atlantic waters. We found similar climatic impacts in all the coupled ocean–atmosphere models with an atmospheric cooling of the North Atlantic except in the region around the Nordic Seas and a slight warming south of the equator in the Atlantic. This meridional gradient of temperature is associated with a southward shift of the tropical rains. The free surface models also show similar sea-level fingerprints notably with a comma-shape of high sea-level rise following the Canary Current.

Description: The Agulhas Current plays a crucial role in the thermohaline circulation through its leakage into the South Atlantic. Under both past and present climates, the trade winds and westerlies could have the ability to modulate the amount of Indian-Atlantic inflow. Compelling arguments have been put forward suggesting that trade winds alone have little impact on the magnitude of Agulhas leakage. Here, employing three ocean models for robust analysis – a global coarse resolution, a regional eddy-permitting and a nested high-resolution eddy-resolving configuration – and systematically altering the position and intensity of the westerly wind belt in a series of sensitivity experiments, it is shown that the westerlies, in particular their intensity, control the leakage. Leakage responds proportionally to the westerlies intensity up to a certain point. Beyond this, through the adjustment of the large-scale circulation, energetic interactions occur between the Agulhas Return Current and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that result in a state where leakage no longer increases. This adjustment takes place within 1 to 2 decades. Contrary to previous assertions, our results further show that an equatorward (poleward) shift in westerlies increases (decreases) leakage. This occurs due to the redistribution of momentum input by the winds. It is concluded that the reported present-day leakage increase could therefore reflect an unadjusted oceanic response mainly to the strengthening westerlies over the last few decades.

Description: A primitive equation model to study the dynamics of the Agulhas system has been developed. The model domain covers the South Atlantic and the south Indian Ocean with a resolution of ⅓° in the Agulhas region while coarser outside. It is driven by a climatology of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It is shown that the model simulates the Agulhas Current, its retroflection, and the ring shedding successfully. The model results show baroclinic anticyclonic eddies in the Mozambique Channel and east of Madagascar, which travel toward the northern Agulhas Current. After the eddies reach the current they are advected southward with the mean flow. Due to the limited numerical resolution only a few eddies reach the retroflection region without much modification. These eddies are responsible for drastic enhancement of the heat transfer from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic and lead to periodicities in the interoceanic heat transport of about 50 days superimposed on the seasonal variability. Combined satellite data from TOPEX/Poseidon and ERS-1 show that the observed vortices in the Mozambique Channel are comparable to those seen in the model. In contrast to this the simulated eddies east of Madagascar seem not to be well reproduced. Analyses of the energy conversion terms between the mean flow and the eddies suggest that barotropic instability plays an important role in the generation of Mozambique Channel eddies. For the generation of Agulhas rings and other eddy structures in the model the barotropic instability mechanism seems to be minor, and baroclinic instability mechanisms are more likely.

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.

Description: In a series of observing system simulations, we test whether the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) can be observed based on the existing Line W deep western boundary array. We simulate a Line W array, which is extended to the surface and to the east to cover the basin to the Bermuda Rise. In the analyzed ocean circulation model ORCA025, such an extended Line W array captures the main characteristics of the western boundary current. Potential trans-basin observing systems for the AMOC are tested by combining the extended Line W array with a mid-ocean transport estimate obtained from thermal wind "measurements" and Ekman transport to the total AMOC (similarly to Hirschi et al., Geophys Res Lett 30(7):1413, 2003). First, we close Line W zonally supplementing the western boundary array with several "moorings" in the basin (Line W-32A degrees N). Second, we supplement the western boundary array with a combination of observations at Bermuda and the eastern part of the RAPID array at 26A degrees N (Line W-B-RAPID). Both, a small number of density profiles across the basin and also only sampling the eastern and western boundary, capture the variability of the AMOC at Line W-32A degrees N and Line W-B-RAPID. In the analyzed model, the AMOC variability at both Line W-32A degrees N and Line W-B-RAPID is dominated by the western boundary current variability. Away from the western boundary, the mid-ocean transport (east of Bermuda) shows no significant relation between the two Line W-based sections and 26A degrees N. Hence, a Line W-based AMOC estimate could yield an estimate of the meridional transport that is independent of the 26A degrees N RAPID estimate. The model-based observing system simulations presented here provide support for the use of Line W as a cornerstone for a trans-basin AMOC observing system.

Description: The relationship between the Agulhas Current and the Agulhas leakage is not well understood. Here, this is investigated using two basin-scale and two global ocean models, of incrementally increasing resolution. The response of the Agulhas Current is evaluated under a series of sensitivity experiments, in which idealised anomalies, designed to geometrically modulate zonal trade wind stress, are applied across the Indian Ocean basin. The imposed wind stress changes exceed ±2 standard deviations from the annual mean trade winds and, in the case of intensification, are partially representative of recently observed trends. The Agulhas leakage is quantified using complimentary techniques based on Lagrangian virtual floats and Eulerian passive tracer flux. As resolution increases, model behavior converges and the sensitivity of the leakage to Agulhas Current transport anomalies is reduced. In the two eddy-resolving configurations tested, the leakage is insensitive to changes in Agulhas Current transport at 32°S, though substantial eddy kinetic energy anomalies are evident. Consistent with observations, the position of the retroflection remains stable. The decoupling of Agulhas Current variability from the Agulhas leakage suggests that, while correlations between the two may exist, they may not have a clear dynamical basis. It is suggested that present and future Agulhas leakage proxies be considered in the context of potentially transient forcing regimes.

Description: The Indian Ocean has sustained robust surface warming in recent decades, but the role of multi-decadal variability remains unclear. Using ocean model hindcasts, characteristics of low-frequency Indian Ocean temperature variations are explored. Simulated upper-ocean temperature changes across the Indian Ocean in the hindcast are consistent with those recorded in observational products and ocean reanalyses. Indian Ocean temperatures exhibit strong warming trends since the 1950s limited to the surface and south of 30°S, while extensive subsurface cooling occurs over much of the tropical Indian Ocean. Previous work focused on diagnosing causes of these long-term trends in the Indian Ocean over the second half of the 20th Century. Instead, the temporal evolution of Indian Ocean subsurface heat content is shown here to reveal distinct multi-decadal variations associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the long-term trends are thus interpreted to result from aliasing of the low-frequency variability. Transmission of the multi-decadal signal occurs via an oceanic pathway through the Indonesian Throughflow and is manifest across the Indian Ocean centered along 12°S as westward propagating Rossby waves modulating thermocline and subsurface heat content variations. Resulting low-frequency changes in the eastern Indian Ocean thermocline depth are associated with decadal variations in the frequency of Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events, with positive IOD events unusually common in the 1960s and 1990s with a relatively shallow thermocline. In contrast, the deeper thermocline depth in the 1970s and 1980s is associated with frequent negative IOD and rare positive IOD events. Changes in Pacific wind forcing in recent decades and associated rapid increases in Indian Ocean subsurface heat content can thus affect the basin’s leading mode of variability, with implications for regional climate and vulnerable societies in surrounding countries.