Sampling--Dependent Transition Paths of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water ...

In this note, we apply Transition Path Theory (TPT) from Markov chains to shed light on the problem of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW) equatorward export. A recent analysis of observed trajectories of submerged floats demanded revision of the traditional abyssal circulation theory, which post...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Beron-Vera, F. J., Olascoaga, M. J., Helfmann, L., Miron, P.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: arXiv 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2208.09499
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.09499
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Summary:In this note, we apply Transition Path Theory (TPT) from Markov chains to shed light on the problem of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW) equatorward export. A recent analysis of observed trajectories of submerged floats demanded revision of the traditional abyssal circulation theory, which postulates that ISOW should steadily flow along a deep boundary current (DBC) around the subpolar North Atlantic prior to exiting it. The TPT analyses carried out here allow to focus the attention on the portions of flow from the origin of ISOW to the region where ISOW exits the subpolar North Atlantic and suggest that insufficient sampling may be biasing the aforementioned demand. The analyses, appropriately adapted to represent a continuous input of ISOW, are carried out on three time-homogeneous Markov chains modeling the ISOW flow. One is constructed using a high number of simulated trajectories homogeneously covering the flow domain. The other two use much fewer trajectories which heterogeneously cover the ... : Submitted to JPO. Comments welcomed! ...