Oscillatory behavior in an ocean general circulation model of the North Atlantic

• Main Author: Brown, Catherine Alicia
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/14578; http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0004/MQ46006.pdf

grantor: University of Toronto Coarse resolution ocean general circulation models are known to produce oscillatory behavior in a variety of forms and over a spectrum of timescales. There are four main potential sources for this behavior: internal model parameters (diffusivities, viscosities), external forcing (wind stress, thermal forcing, freshwater forcing), topography, and initial conditions. After imposing enhanced salinity fluxes with mixed boundary conditions, the model simulations produced a spectrum of oscillatory behavior as a function of the internal modeling parameters alone. In this study, the experiments with idealized topography generated a wider range of model behavior than reported in other studies. In general, this work has shown that two dimensional salinity fluxes produced a broader range of behavior than described in the literature where idealized salinity fluxes trivialized the variability of the diagnosed salt flux field. The initial conditions were the least important of the factors effecting the thermohaline circulation. M.Sc.