Impact of transient freshwater releases in the Southern Ocean on the AMOC and climate

• Main Authors: Didier Swingedouw, Thierry Fichefet, Hugues Goosse, Marie-france Loutre
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Greenland; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; NADW; North Atlantic Deep Water; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.518.4298; http://dods.ipsl.jussieu.fr/dssce/public_html/Presentation/PosterEGU_2008.pdf

•There is an intriguing relationship between the re-constructed temperatures in Greenland and Antarctica (Blunier and Brooke 2001 [1]). •The bipolar ocean seesaw, an image of the balance be-tween the North Atlantic deep Water (NADW) and the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), can explain this type of relationship. • In that picture, a decrease in AABW production leads to an increase in NADW production and conversely (Stocker et al. 1992 [2]). •Nonetheless, Stouffer et al. (2007 [3]) show, using an ocean-atmosphere GCM, that putting freshwater in the Southern Ocean (SO) decreases the NADW production.