PL31A:
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: Modeling and Observations IV


Session ID#: 36783

Session Description:
Through its associated heat, salt, and carbon transports, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) significantly influences the climate of the North Atlantic and surrounding areas and can even impact global climate through interactions with atmosphere on seasonal to multi-decadal timescales. Because the memory of the ocean vastly exceeds that of the atmosphere, AMOC is thought to represent the dynamical memory of the climate system, playing a major role in climate variations, hence in climate predictions, on these and even longer, i.e., centennial to millennial, timescales. Support for such a prominent role for AMOC on long time scales comes from coupled general circulation model simulations and proxy records. On shorter, i.e., intra-seasonal to decadal, timescales, measurements of transports, heat content, and other variables throughout the Atlantic Ocean have been instrumental in investigating the spatial structure, mechanisms, and impacts of AMOC variability, showing the importance of processes from the mesoscale to the basin scale. A synergy of knowledge gained from all these efforts will lead to a better understanding of AMOC.

We invite contributions from modeling and observational (both instrumental and proxy) studies, investigating AMOC variability and mechanisms as well as its role in climate predictions on various, e.g., decadal, timescales.

Primary Chair:  Gokhan Danabasoglu, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States
Co-chairs:  Femke de Jong, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Ocean Science Systems, Texel, Netherlands, Rong Zhang, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Meric A Srokosz, National Oceanography Center, Soton, Southampton, United Kingdom
Moderators:  Gokhan Danabasoglu, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, Femke de Jong, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Ocean Science Systems, Texel, Netherlands, Rong Zhang, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Meric A Srokosz, National Oceanography Centre, United Kingdom
Student Paper Review Liaisons:  Femke de Jong, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Ocean Science Systems, Texel, Netherlands and Rong Zhang, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Index Terms:

4255 Numerical modeling [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4262 Ocean observing systems [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4263 Ocean predictability and prediction [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4532 General circulation [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
Cross-Topics:
  • OM - Ocean Modeling
  • PC - Past, Present and Future Climate

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

Variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation transports in forced CORE-II versus coupled CMIP5 simulations (303262)
Eric P. Chassignet, Xiaobiao Xu and Fuchang Wang, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Decomposition of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Transports in CMIP5 Models and the RAPID Array (323105)
Rebecca Lynn Beadling1, Joellen L Russell1 and Ronald J Stouffer2, (1)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, (2)Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, United States
Labrador Sea Water Formation, Export and Property Changes from Ship Surveys, Profiling Floats, Moored Instruments and Ocean Model Simulations (312833)
Igor Yashayaev1, David Brickman1, 2, Jürgen Fischer3, Johannes Karstensen3, Dagmar Kieke4, John W Loder1, Marilena Oltmanns3, Monika Rhein4, Zeliang Wang1 and Stephen G Yeager5, (1)Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth, NS, Canada, (2)University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, AB, Canada, (3)GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Kiel, Germany, (4)MARUM, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, (5)NCAR, Oceanography, Boulder, CO, United States
Local and Downstream Relationships Between the Volume of Newly Formed Labrador Sea Water and Overturning Circulation in the North Atlantic (317889)
Feili Li1, M Susan Lozier1, Gokhan Danabasoglu2, Naomi P Holliday3, Young-Oh Kwon4, Anastasia Romanou5, Stephen G Yeager6 and Rong Zhang7, (1)Duke University, Durham, NC, United States, (2)NCAR, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)NERC Natural Environment Research Council, Swindon, United Kingdom, (4)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Physical Oceanography Department, Woods Hole, MA, United States, (5)Columbia University of New York, Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, New York, NY, United States, (6)NCAR, Oceanography, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, United States
The interplay between eddies, deep convection and downwelling of dense water in an idealized model study of the Labrador Sea (310643)
Sotiria Georgiou1, Carine G van der Boog1, Nils Brueggemann2, Julie Pietrzak3 and Caroline A Katsman4, (1)Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands, (2)Universitaet Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, (3)Delft University of Technology, Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Delft, Netherlands, (4)Delft University of Technology, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Delft, Netherlands
AMOC Stability in Climate Models (302931)
Peter R Gent, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States
Can the salt advection feedback be detected in decadal AMOC variability? (309211)
Wei Cheng1,2, Wilbert Weijer3, Who M Kim4, Gokhan Danabasoglu5, Stephen G Yeager6, Peter R Gent4, Dongxiao Zhang7, John Chiang8 and Jiaxu Zhang3, (1)NOAA/PMEL, Seattle, WA, United States, (2)University of Washington, JISAO, Seattle, WA, United States, (3)Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (4)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)NCAR, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)NCAR, Oceanography, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)JISAO/University of Washington and NOAA/PMEL, Seattle, WA, United States, (8)UC Berkeley, Geography, Berkeley, CA, United States
Interannual SST variability in climate projections pre-determined by unforced control simulations (316417)
Leon Hermanson, Met Office Hadley center for Climate Change, Exeter, United Kingdom and Matthew Menary, Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom

See more of: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger