2012 Project Summary Assessing Meridional Transports in the North Atlantic Ocean

• Main Authors: Pis Kathryn Kelly, Luanne Thompson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.431.2854; http://www.usclivar.org/sites/default/files/amoc/Kelly_2012AMOC_projsum.pdf

The goal of this study is to explain observed decadal anomalies of heat and freshwater in terms of the mechanisms that move water properties poleward. Analyses of high-‐resolution ocean models and altimetry and related observations focus on property transport anomalies and on the forcing mechanisms responsible for those anomalies. Recent Results (1) In an analysis of the contributions to North Atlantic sea level variability, graduate student Jinting Zhang found that surface heating makes a substantial nonseasonal contribution and that the baroclinic Sverdrup balance accounts for much of the intergyre variability. Zhang received her M.S. degree in September 2011 and will continue to work towards Ph.D. She is currently working on a manuscript (Jiang et al, 2012 to be submitted to