The sensitivity of southeast pacific heat distribution to local and remote changes in ocean properties ...

• Main Authors: Jones, DC, Boland, E, Meijers, AJS, Forget, G, Josey, S, Sallée, JB, Shuckburgh, E
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Meteorological Society 2020
• Subjects: South Pacific Ocean; Southern Ocean; Advection; Inverse methods; Ocean models; Interannual variability; Pacific
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.49812; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/302741

AbstractThe Southern Ocean features ventilation pathways that transport surface waters into the subsurface thermocline on time scales from decades to centuries, sequestering anomalies of heat and carbon away from the atmosphere and thereby regulating the rate of surface warming. Despite its importance for climate sensitivity, the factors that control the distribution of heat along these pathways are not well understood. In this study, we use an observationally constrained, physically consistent global ocean model to examine the sensitivity of heat distribution in the recently ventilated subsurface Pacific (RVP) sector of the Southern Ocean to changes in ocean temperature and salinity. First, we define the RVP using numerical passive tracer release experiments that highlight the ventilation pathways. Next, we use an ensemble of adjoint sensitivity experiments to quantify the sensitivity of the RVP heat content to changes in ocean temperature and salinity. In terms of sensitivities to surface ocean properties, ...