Reduced Stability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation due to Wind Stress Feedback during Glacial Times

• Main Authors: Olivier Arzel, Matthew H. England, Willem, P. Sijp
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.583.372; http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~oarzel/publis/Arzel_et_al.JCLIM2008.pdf

A previous study by Mikolajewicz suggested that the wind stress feedback stabilizes the Atlantic ther-mohaline circulation. This result was obtained under modern climate conditions, for which the presence of the massive continental ice sheets characteristic of glacial times is missing. Here a coupled ocean– atmosphere–sea ice model of intermediate complexity, set up in an idealized spherical sector geometry of the Atlantic basin, is used to show that, under glacial climate conditions, wind stress feedback actually reduces the stability of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). The analysis reveals that the influ-ence of the wind stress feedback on the glacial MOC response to an external source of freshwater applied at high northern latitudes is controlled by the following two distinct processes: 1) the interactions between the wind field and the sea ice export in the Northern Hemisphere (NH), and 2) the northward Ekman transport in the tropics and upward Ekman pumping in the core of the NH subpolar gyre. The former dominates the response of the coupled system; it delays the recovery of the MOC, and in some cases even stabilizes collapsed MOC states achieved during the hosing period. The latter plays a minor role and mitigates the impact of the former process by reducing the upper-ocean freshening in deep-water formation regions. Hence, the wind stress feedback delays the recovery of the glacial MOC, which is the opposite of