Untangling the Relationship Between AMOC Variability and North Atlantic Upper‐Ocean Temperature and Salinity
The relationship between Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability and high-latitude North Atlantic buoyancy changes is complicated by the latter both driving, and responding to, AMOC changes. A maximum covariance analysis applied to a 1,201-year preindustrial control simulation...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
eScholarship, University of California
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bk973wd |
| Summary: | The relationship between Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability and high-latitude North Atlantic buoyancy changes is complicated by the latter both driving, and responding to, AMOC changes. A maximum covariance analysis applied to a 1,201-year preindustrial control simulation reveals two leading modes that separate these two distinct roles of North Atlantic temperature and salinity as related to AMOC variability. A linear combination of the two modes accounts for most of the variation of a widely used AMOC index. The same analysis applied to another control simulation known to possess two distinct regimes of AMOC variability—oscillatory and red-noise—suggests that the North Atlantic buoyancy-forced AMOC variability is present in both regimes but is weaker in the latter, and moreover there is pronounced multidecadal/centennial AMOC behavior in the latter regime that is unrelated to North Atlantic buoyancy forcing. |
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