3068 JOURNAL OF CLIMATE VOLUME 18 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE Human-Induced Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Global climate models indicate that the poleward shift of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current observed over recent decades may have been significantly human induced. The poleward shift, along with a significant increase in the transport of water around Antarctica, is predicted to continue into the fut...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2004
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.408.9851 http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Fyfe_circumpolar.pdf |
| Summary: | Global climate models indicate that the poleward shift of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current observed over recent decades may have been significantly human induced. The poleward shift, along with a significant increase in the transport of water around Antarctica, is predicted to continue into the future. To appreciate the magnitude of the poleward shift it is noted that by century’s end the concomitant shrinking of the Southern Ocean is predicted to displace a volume of water close to that in the entire Arctic Ocean. A simple theory, balancing surface Ekman drift and ocean eddy mixing, explains these changes as the oceanic response to changing wind stress. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) encircles the Antarctic continent, flowing eastward through the southern portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It is the world’s largest, and arguably most influential, ocean current (Nowlin and Klink 1986; Rintoul et al. 2001). While the speed of the ACC is not extraordinary (about 0.5 m s �1 at the surface), it’s |
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