Recent wind-driven variability in Atlantic water mass distribution and meridional overturning circulation

• Published in: Journal of Physical Oceanography
• Main Authors: Evans, Dafydd Gwyn, Toole, John M., Forget, Gael, Zika, Jan D., Naveira Garabato, Alberto C., Nurser, A. J. George, Yu, Lisan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Meteorological Society 2017
• Subjects: North Atlantic Ocean; Atmosphere-ocean interaction; Ekman pumping/transport; Ocean circulation; Water masses; Inverse methods; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/8915

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 633-647, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0089.1. Interannual variability in the volumetric water mass distribution within the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre is described in relation to variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The relative roles of diabatic and adiabatic processes in the volume and heat budgets of the subtropical gyre are investigated by projecting data into temperature coordinates as volumes of water using an Argo-based climatology and an ocean state estimate (ECCO version 4). This highlights that variations in the subtropical gyre volume budget are predominantly set by transport divergence in the gyre. A strong correlation between the volume anomaly due to transport divergence and the variability of both thermocline depth and Ekman pumping over the gyre suggests that wind-driven heave drives transport anomalies at the gyre boundaries. This wind-driven heaving contributes significantly to variations in the heat content of the gyre, as do anomalies in the air–sea fluxes. The analysis presented suggests that wind forcing plays an important role in driving interannual variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and that this variability can be unraveled from spatially distributed hydrographic observations using the framework presented here. DGE was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship award at the University of Southampton. JMT’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant OCE-1332667). GF’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-0961713 and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through Grant NA10OAR4310135. The contributions of JDZ and AJGN were supported by the NERC Grant ‘‘Climate ...