Southern Ocean Eddy Compensation Examined with a High-Resolution Ocean Model
The eastward winds that overlie the Southern Ocean are able to provide the necessary means that allows water at depth to resurface and ensure closure for the meridional overturning circulation. Contemporary studies that employ high-resolution simplified or regional ocean models have however shown th...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Conference Object |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Zentralbibliothek
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/845742 https://juser.fz-juelich.de/search?p=id:%22FZJ-2018-02954%22 |
| Summary: | The eastward winds that overlie the Southern Ocean are able to provide the necessary means that allows water at depth to resurface and ensure closure for the meridional overturning circulation. Contemporary studies that employ high-resolution simplified or regional ocean models have however shown that ocean eddies, oceanic storms that origin from the instability of the mean circulation, are able to compensate this wind-driven upwelling. We here present results from a suite of Southern Ocean wind stress perturbation experiments performed with a global ocean model. Simulations with the model are performed at two different horizontal grid resolutions, one where eddies are parameterised and one where they are explicitly resolved. It is shown that the eddy-driven circulation is more surface intensified in the high resolution model, and therefore leads to a different total overturning circulation with present day wind stress magnitude. The wind stress change experiments both indicate that the parameterised eddy circulation understimates the response to a wind stress change, and that the conceptual view of eddy compensation as a competition solely between a wind-driven and an eddy-induced circulation response might not hold in a more complex model. |
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