• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Curl; Labrador Sea
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.69.3434; http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/journalclub/papers/IkegayaYuste_2004_Science.pdf

wind stress curl changes is a delayed process and would retard the existing cyclonic circulation. We would expect this influence to manifest itself with large reversals in PC1 of the geostrophic velocity like the variations in the curl PC1 or NAO with a 3- to 5-year delay. Figure 5C shows that there are peaks in geostrophic velocity PC1 with such a delay, but they are small relative to the overwhelming background trend. Property 3 of the continuous weakening of the subpolar air-sea heat loss is consistent with the observations that deep convective conditions in the Labrador Sea have been absent since the early 1990s. Although changes in advection of heat can have as much as 50 % effect on the subpolar heat storage changes (10), the local heat flux changes are still important, particularly in forcing deep convection. Because deep convection maintains a cold core around which lighter water masses circulate, cessation of deep convection would lead to a decaying baroclinic gyre. This decaying cold core of the Labrador Gyre