Towards measuring the meridional overturning circulation from space

International audience We present a step towards measuring the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), i.e. the full-depth water mass transport, in the North Atlantic using satellite data. Using the Parallel Ocean Climate Model, we simulate satellite observations of ocean bottom pressure and sea s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cromwell, D., Shaw, A. G. P., Challenor, P., Houseago-Stokes, R., Tokmakian, R.
Other Authors: National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOC), University of Southampton, Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2006
Subjects:
[SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean
Atmosphere
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://hal.science/hal-00298428
https://hal.science/hal-00298428/document
https://hal.science/hal-00298428/file/osd-3-1623-2006.pdf
Description
Summary:International audience We present a step towards measuring the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), i.e. the full-depth water mass transport, in the North Atlantic using satellite data. Using the Parallel Ocean Climate Model, we simulate satellite observations of ocean bottom pressure and sea surface height (SSH) over the 20-year period from 1979?1998, and use a linear model to estimate the MOC. As much as 93.5% of the variability in the smoothed transport is thereby explained. This increases to 98% when SSH and bottom pressure are first smoothed. We present initial studies of predicting the time evolution of the MOC, with promising results. It should be stressed that this is an initial step only, and that to produce an actual working system for measuring the MOC from space would require considerable future work.

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