Impacts of planetary ocean waves on Antarctic and North Atlantic climate ...

• Main Author: Webb, David
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: UNSW Sydney 2021
• Subjects: Impacts of planetary ocean waves; Antarctic climate; North Atlantic climate; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; Antarctica; NADW; North Atlantic Deep Water; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/1953; http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/100044

Planetary waves play a role in a large variety of oceanic and climate dynamics. In particular, Kelvin waves can provide rapid teleconnections from large-scale climate and weather events to remote regions of the globe. Kelvin waves may be partially responsible for linking climatic changes in Southern Ocean winds to increases in subsurface warming around Antarctica that can lead to glacial ice-melt and increases in global sea level rise. Kelvin waves may also link changes in Southern Ocean winds to increases in North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation and an enhancement of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is responsible for circulating a vast amount of the ocean’s heat and nutrient content. However, the exact role of Kelvin waves in these processes is unclear. This thesis aims to further clarify the role that Kelvin waves play in these high-latitude climate processes. First, we use a suite of idealized models in order to better understand the dynamics of barotropic Kelvin waves ...