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: Estimating the magnitude of Agulhas leakage, the volume flux of water from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean, is difficult because of the presence of other circulation systems in the Agulhas region. Indian Ocean water in the Atlantic Ocean is vigorously mixed and diluted in the Cape Basin. Eulerian integration methods, where the velocity field perpendicular to a section is integrated to yield a flux, have to be calibrated so that only the flux by Agulhas leakage is sampled. Two Eulerian methods for estimating the magnitude of Agulhas leakage are tested within a high-resolution two-way nested model with the goal to devise a mooring-based measurement strategy. At the GoodHope line, a section halfway through the Cape Basin, the integrated velocity perpendicular to that line is compared to the magnitude of Agulhas leakage as determined from the transport carried by numerical Lagrangian floats. In the first method, integration is limited to the flux of water warmer and more saline than specific threshold values. These threshold values are determined by maximizing the correlation with the float-determined time series. By using the threshold values, approximately half of the leakage can directly be measured. The total amount of Agulhas leakage can be estimated using a linear regression, within a 90% confidence band of 12 Sv. In the second method, a subregion of the GoodHope line is sought so that integration over that subregion yields an Eulerian flux as close to the float-determined leakage as possible. It appears that when integration is limited within the model to the upper 300 m of the water column within 900 km of the African coast the time series have the smallest root-mean-square difference. This method yields a root-mean-square error of only 5.2 Sv but the 90% confidence band of the estimate is 20 Sv. It is concluded that the optimum thermohaline threshold method leads to more accurate estimates even though the directly measured transport is a factor of two lower than the actual magnitude of Agulhas leakage in this model.

Description: Highlights • Shelf sediment iron source concentrated around coastal margins. • No large iron flux from sediments on shallow submerged plateaus in the open ocean. • Horizontal advection of iron more important than upwelling of iron at ocean fronts. • Western boundary currents major supply mechanism of iron for Sub-Antarctic Zone. Abstract Primary productivity is limited by the availability of iron over large areas of the global ocean. Changes in the supply of iron to these regions could have major impacts on primary productivity and the carbon cycle. However, source regions and supply mechanisms of iron to the global oceans remain poorly constrained. Shelf sediments are considered one of the largest sources of dissolved iron to the global ocean, and a large shelf sediment iron flux is prescribed in many biogeochemical models over all areas of bathymetry shallower than 1000 m. Here, we infer the likely location of shelf sediment iron sources in the Southern Ocean, by identifying where satellite chlorophyll concentrations are enhanced over shallow bathymetry (〈1000 m). We further compare chlorophyll concentrations with the position of ocean fronts, to assess the relative role of horizontal advection and upwelling for supplying iron to the ocean surface. We show that mean annual chlorophyll concentrations are not visibly enhanced over areas of shallow bathymetry that are located more than 500 km from a coastline. Mean annual chlorophyll concentrations 〉2 mg m−3 are only found within 50 km of a continental or island coastline. These results suggest that sedimentary iron sources only exist on continental and island shelves. Large sedimentary iron fluxes do not seem present on seamounts and submerged plateaus. Large chlorophyll blooms develop where the western boundary currents detach from the continental shelves, and turn eastward into the Sub-Antarctic Zone. Chlorophyll concentrations are enhanced along contours of sea surface height extending off the continental shelves, as shown by the trajectories of virtual water parcels in satellite altimetry data. These analyses support the hypothesis that bioavailable iron from continental shelves is entrained into western boundary currents, and advected into the Sub-Antarctic Zone along the Dynamical Subtropical Front. Our results indicate that upwelling at fronts in the open ocean is unlikely to deliver iron to the ocean surface from deep sources. Finally, we hypothesise how a reduction in sea level may have altered the distribution of shelf sediment iron sources in the Southern Ocean and increased export production over the Sub-Antarctic Zone during glacial intervals.

Description: Ocean surface winds, currents, and waves play a crucial role in exchanges of momentum, energy, heat, freshwater, gases, and other tracers between the ocean, atmosphere, and ice. Despite surface waves being strongly coupled to the upper ocean circulation and the overlying atmosphere, efforts to improve ocean, atmospheric, and wave observations and models have evolved somewhat independently. From an observational point of view, community efforts to bridge this gap have led to proposals for satellite Doppler oceanography mission concepts, which could provide unprecedented measurements of absolute surface velocity and directional wave spectrum at global scales. This paper reviews the present state of observations of surface winds, currents, and waves, and it outlines observational gaps that limit our current understanding of coupled processes that happen at the air-sea-ice interface. A significant challenge for the coming decade of wind, current, and wave observations will come in combining and interpreting measurements from (a) wave-buoys and high-frequency radars in coastal regions, (b) surface drifters and wave-enabled drifters in the open-ocean, marginal ice zones, and wave-current interaction “hot-spots,” and (c) simultaneous measurements of absolute surface currents, ocean surface wind vector, and directional wave spectrum from Doppler satellite sensors.

Description: The Sea surface KInematics Multiscale monitoring (SKIM) satellite mission is designed to explore ocean surface current and waves. This includes tropical currents, notably the unknown patterns of divergence and their impact on the ocean heat budget near the Equator, monitoring of the emerging Arctic up to 82.5$(\circ)$N. SKIM will also make unprecedented direct measurements of strong currents, from boundary currents to the Antarctic circumpolar current, and their interaction with ocean waves with expected impacts on air-sea fluxes and extreme waves. For the first time, SKIM will directly measure the ocean surface current vector from space. The main instrument on SKIM is a Ka-band conically scanning, multi-beam Doppler radar altimeter/wave scatterometer that includes a state-of-the-art nadir beam comparable to the Poseidon-4 instrument on Sentinel 6. The well proven Doppler pulse-pair technique will give a surface drift velocity representative of the top two meters of the ocean, after subtracting a large wave-induced contribution. Horizontal velocity components will be obtained with an accuracy better than 7 cm/s for horizontal wavelengths larger than 80~km and time resolutions larger than 15 days, with a mean revisit time of 4 days for of 99\% of the global oceans. This will provide unique and innovative measurements that will further our understanding of the transports in the upper ocean layer, permanently distributing heat, carbon, plankton, and plastics. SKIM will also benefit from co-located measurements of water vapor, rain rate, sea ice concentration, and wind vectors provided by the European operational satellite MetOp-SG(B), allowing many joint analyses. SKIM is one of the two candidate satellite missions under development for ESA Earth Explorer 9. The other candidate is the Far infrared Radiation Understanding and Monitoring (FORUM). The final selection will be announced by September 2019, for a launch in the coming decade.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Ocean Modelling 121 (2018): 49-75, doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2017.11.008.

Description: Lagrangian analysis is a powerful way to analyse the output of ocean circulation models and other ocean velocity data such as from altimetry. In the Lagrangian approach, large sets of virtual particles are integrated within the three-dimensional, time-evolving velocity fields. Over several decades, a variety of tools and methods for this purpose have emerged. Here, we review the state of the art in the field of Lagrangian analysis of ocean velocity data, starting from a fundamental kinematic framework and with a focus on large-scale open ocean applications. Beyond the use of explicit velocity fields, we consider the influence of unresolved physics and dynamics on particle trajectories. We comprehensively list and discuss the tools currently available for tracking virtual particles. We then showcase some of the innovative applications of trajectory data, and conclude with some open questions and an outlook. The overall goal of this review paper is to reconcile some of the different techniques and methods in Lagrangian ocean analysis, while recognising the rich diversity of codes that have and continue to emerge, and the challenges of the coming age of petascale computing.

Description: EvS has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 715386). This research for PJW was supported as part of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Funding for HFD was provided by Grant No. DE-SC0012457 from the US Department of Energy. PB acknowledges support for this work from NERC grant NE/R011567/1. SFG is supported by NERC National Capability funding through the Extended Ellett Line Programme.