q 1999 American Meteorological Society A Different Perspective on the Export of Water from the South Atlantic

• Main Authors: Doron Nof, Stephen, Van Gorder
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1998
• Subjects: Separation Point; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.690.6086; http://doronnof.net/files/73.pdf

A different way of looking at the meridional warm water (su, 26.8) flux in the South and North Atlantic is proposed. The approach involves the blending of observational aspects into analytical modeling, which allows one to circumvent finding a detailed solution to the complete wind–thermohaline problem. The method employs an integration of the momentum equations along a ‘‘horseshoe’ ’ path in a rectangular basin that is open on the southern side. The initial model considered involves a northward flowing upper layer, a stagnant intermediate layer, and a southward flowing deep layer. By choosing the integration path to begin at one separation point (the Brazil Current separation from South America) and end at another separation point (the Gulf Stream separation), a rather simple expression for the meridional upper-layer transport (T) is obtained. In this scenario the high-latitude cooling affects the warm water northward transport through its influence on the latitude of the western boundary current separation. The authors find that the combined transport (i.e., the transport induced by both wind and high-latitude cooling) is given by T 5 # (t l/r) dl/ ( f 1 2 f 2), where f 1 and f 2 are the Coriolis parameters along the northern and southern separation latitudes (i.e., f 2, 0), and t l is the wind stress along the integration path (l). The amount of high-