Does the Wind Control the Import and Export of the South Atlantic?

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: Arctic; Southern Ocean; Arctic Ocean; Bering Strait; Greenland; Pacific; Arctic Basin; Atlantic Arctic; Atlantic-Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.691.677; http://doronnof.net/files/76.pdf

A different way of examining the meridional flux of warm and intermediate water (su, 27.50) from the Southern Ocean into the South Atlantic is proposed. The method considers the Americas to be a ‘‘pseudo island’’ in the sense that the continent is entirely surrounded by water but has no circulation around it. It is shown that, although the northern connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific (via the Bering Strait) is weak, it imposes severe limitations on the sea level in the Atlantic basin: so much so that it allows one to compute the meridional transport without finding the detailed solution to the complete wind–thermohaline problem. The method employs an integration of the linearized momentum equations along a closed contour containing the Americas, Greenland, the Atlantic, and parts of the Arctic Ocean. First, an idealized rectangular model involving three layers, an active continuously stratified upper layer containing both thermocline (su, 26.80) and intermediate water (26.80, su, 27.80), an inert deep layer (27.80, su, 27.90), and a southward moving bottom layer (su. 27.90) is considered. In this idealized model, the Americas are represented by the pseudo island. Deep-water formation is allowed (in the northern part of the basin east of the Americas and south of the gap connecting the Atlantic–Arctic basin to the Pacific), but the cooling rate need not be specified. The basin is subject to both zonal winds and heat exchange with the