Stability of Thermohaline Circulation with respect to fresh water release

• Main Authors: Ajay Patwardhan, Vivek Tewary
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Climate change; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.312.4836; http://arxiv.org/pdf/0805.2375v1.pdf

The relatively warm climate found in the North-Western Europe is due to the Gulf Stream that circulates warm saline water from southern latitudes to Europe. In North Atlantic Ocean the stream gives out a large amount of heat, cools down and sinks to the bottom to complete the Thermo-Haline Circulation. There is considerable debate on the stability of the stream to inputs of fresh water from the melting ice in Greenland and Arctic. The circulation, being switched off, will have massive impact on the climate of Europe. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned of this danger in its recent report. Our aim is to model the Thermo-Haline Circulation at the point where it sinks in the North-Atlantic. We create a two- dimensional discrete map modeling the salinity gradient and vertical velocity of the stream. We look for how a perturbation in the form of fresh water release can destabilize the circulation by pushing the velocity below a certain threshold. 1