The circulation of the Southern Ocean and the adjacent ocean basins determined by inverse methods ...

• Main Author: Sloyan, Bernadette M
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: University Of Tasmania 2023
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.25959/23244680.v1; https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_circulation_of_the_Southern_Ocean_and_the_adjacent_ocean_basins_determined_by_inverse_methods/23244680/1

Inverse methods which conserve mass, heat and salt are applied to high resolution hydrographic data in the Southern Ocean and adjacent ocean basins. Dianeutral fluxes are incorporated into the inverse model by including a separate dianeutral flux unknown for each property. Further model development includes the addition of air-sea forcing (wind stress, air-sea heat flux and freshwater flux). The inverse model is then used to test different circulation hypotheses, including the estimated size of the heat loss over the Weddell Sea and the strength of the Malvinas Current. The accuracy of inverse methods are tested using the Fine Resolution Antarctic Model. This shows that the lateral and dianeutral fluxes are well determined by inverse methods and that the \true\" effective diffusion across neutral surfaces in the inverse model can be much larger and in some cases of opposite sign to the explicit diffusion in the numerical model when layers outcrop or undercrop. The latter results has implications for how ...