The northward meridional flow into the South Atlantic, the South Pacific, and the Indian Oceans

• Main Author: Doron Nof
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bering Strait; Indian; Pacific; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1048.9404; http://doronnof.net/downloads/Northward1.pdf

Abstract Recently, a "quasi-island" approach for examining the meridional flux of warm and intermediate water from the Southern Ocean into the South Atlantic, the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean was proposed The solution gives one expected and one unexpected result. It shows that, as expected, about 9 ± 5 Sv of upper and intermediate water enter the South Atlantic from the Southern Ocean. It also shows, however, the unexpected result that the Pacific-Indian Ocean system should contain a "shallow" meridional overturning cell carrying 18 ± 5 Sv. By "shallow" it is meant here that the cell does not extend all the way to the bottom (as it does in the Atlantic) but is terminated at mid-depth. (This reflects the fact that there is no bottom water formation in the Pacific.) Both of these calculations rely on the observation that there is almost no flow through the Bering Strait and on the assumption that there is a negligible pressure torque on the Bering Strait's sill. Here, we present a new and different approach which does not rely on the above two Sv enter the Atlantic and 20 Sv enter the combined Pacific-Indian Ocean system which is also in agreement with the quasi-island calculation. These agreements indicate that the assumptions made in the earlier studies regarding the Bering Strait are probably valid.