Changes in shelf waters due to air-sea fluxes and their influence on the Arctic Ocean circulation as simulated in the OCCAM global ocean model

• Main Author: Levine, R.C.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; St. Anna Trough; Arctic Basin; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/25111/; https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/25111/1/Levine_2005_PhD.pdf

In this study we look at the ocean circulation of the Arctic Ocean in the high-resolution OCCAM global ocean model. The Arctic Ocean consists of deep basins surrounded by a large area of continental shelves, where cooling and ice formation play an important role in dense water formation. In the model these dense waters are transported by a circumpolar boundary current into the deep convection sites of the North Atlantic Ocean. The boundary current is thought to be a continuous feature in the real ocean, however the driving force is still unknown. We provide evidence that buoyancy fluxes that occur due to air-sea exchanges on the continental shelves are an important driving force for the boundary current in the model. The formation area of the circumpolar boundary current is found in the Barents Sea, where there is a high pressure area associated with cooling of inflowing Atlantic Water (AW). The modified water, Barents Sea Water (BSW), is then able to pass through the Arctic Front as it sinks into the Arctic Basin via the St Anna Trough in a boundary current. The high density signal of these waters can be seen all around the continental slope of the Arctic Ocean as a continuous pressure gradient. The boundary pressure gradient continues into the North Atlantic, where a low pressure region is found off Cape Hatteras. A time-dependent variant of an accurate particle tracking technique has been applied to calculate pathways of the dense waters using stored velocity fields of the OCCAM model. This technique has been extended with a representation of random motions due to diffusive effects. An expression for the random motions is derived using the theory of Brownian motion, and is chosen to match the Laplacian eddy viscosity terms in the momentum equations of the OCCAM model. The trajectories of the dense waters on the Barents Sea shelf follow the boundary current, and are guided around the slope by topographical contours. However the pathways are severely affected by large-scale wind-driven features as the ...