A model study of the wind-driven and intrinsic variability of the Atlantic Ocean

• Main Author: Quattrocchi, Giovanni
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II 2010
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6092/unina/fedoa/8122; http://www.fedoa.unina.it/8122

Model studies of the large-scale oceanic variability are presented in this thesis. The North Atlantic Ocean is the basin under investigation and the tropical and mid-latitude regions are considered separately. The adopted model is based on the nonlinear primitive equations in the shallow water, reduced-gravity approximation in the presence of schematic coastlines that mimic with some degree of realism the real continental boundaries. This approach has the advantage of allowing for the identification of basic dynamical mechanisms and, to some extent, also for direct comparison with observational data. The studies of the low- and mid-latitude North Atlantic Ocean are aimed at analyzing the directly wind-driven and intrinsically generated variability, respectively. More precisely, in the tropical region, the model is forced by a time-dependent wind field obtained by ECMWF data, that will induce a variable oceanic signal due to both the local response to Ekman pumping and the non-local response associated with the activation of teleconnection mechanisms. On the other hand, in the mid-latitude model the forcing will be provided by a time-independent climatological wind stress field, so that one can be sure that all the low-frequency variability produced by the model is to be accounted for non-linear mechanisms internal to the ocean system.