Lagrangian Upwelling Pathways of Deep Waters in the Southern Ocean

Henri F Drake, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Cambridge, MA, United States, Adele K Morrison, Princeton University, AOS Program, Princeton, NJ, United States, Stephen Matthew Griffies, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, United States, Jorge L Sarmiento, Princeton University, Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton, NJ, United States, Wilbert Weijer, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States and Alison R Gray, University of Washington, School of Oceanography, Seattle, WA, United States
Abstract:
Despite covering less than a third of the global ocean surface, the Southern Ocean accounts for up to 50% of the ocean anthropogenic CO2 uptake, accounts for 75% of ocean heat uptake, and provides nutrients to the thermocline worldwide. For this reason, climate scientists are interested in the upwelling pathways of deep water in the Southern Ocean. Observations only give a large-scale view of the overturning and do not give information on the mechanisms responsible for upwelling such as western boundary currents or topographic hotspots of eddy activity. We use offline Lagrangian particle tracking methods to quantify upwelling transport along western boundary currents and near topography in a high-resolution coupled global climate model. The role of eddies is assessed by comparing overturning pathways between models with ocean resolutions of 0.1°, 0.25°, and 1°.
Back to: Physical and Biogeochemical Processes in the Southern Ocean: Observations, State Estimation, and Modeling IV Posters