116 research outputs found
Characteristics and robustness of Agulhas leakage estimates: an inter-comparison study of Lagrangian methods
The inflow of relatively warm and salty water from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic via Agulhas leakage is important for the global overturning circulation and the global climate. In this study, we analyse the robustness of Agulhas leakage estimates as well as the thermohaline property modifications of Agulhas leakage south of Africa. Lagrangian experiments with both the newly developed tool Parcels and the well established tool Ariane were performed to simulate Agulhas leakage in the eddy-rich oceanâsea-ice model INALT20 (1/20â horizontal resolution) forced by the JRA55-do atmospheric boundary conditions. The average transport, its variability, trend and the transit time from the Agulhas Current to the Cape Basin of Agulhas leakage is simulated comparably with both Lagrangian tools, emphasizing the robustness of our method. Different designs of the Lagrangian experiment alter in particular the total transport of Agulhas leakage by up to 2âSv, but the variability and trend of the transport are similar across these estimates. During the transit from the Agulhas Current at 32ââS to the Cape Basin, a cooling and freshening of Agulhas leakage waters occurs especially at the location of the Agulhas Retroflection, resulting in a density increase as the thermal effect dominates. Beyond the strong airâsea exchange around South Africa, Agulhas leakage warms and salinifies the water masses below the thermocline in the South Atlantic
Model simulations on the long-term dispersal of 137Cs released into the Pacific Ocean off Fukushima
A sequence of global ocean circulation models, with horizontal mesh sizes of 0.5°, 0.25° and 0.1°, are used to estimate the long-term dispersion by ocean currents and mesoscale eddies of a slowly decaying tracer (half-life of 30 years, comparable to that of 137Cs) from the local waters off the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plants. The tracer was continuously injected into the coastal waters over some weeks; its subsequent spreading and dilution in the Pacific Ocean was then simulated for 10 years. The simulations do not include any data assimilation, and thus, do not account for the actual state of the local ocean currents during the release of highly contaminated water from the damaged plants in MarchâApril 2011. An ensemble differing in initial current distributions illustrates their importance for the tracer patterns evolving during the first months, but suggests a minor relevance for the large-scale tracer distributions after 2â3 years. By then the tracer cloud has penetrated to depths of more than 400 m, spanning the western and central North Pacific between 25°N and 55°N, leading to a rapid dilution of concentrations. The rate of dilution declines in the following years, while the main tracer patch propagates eastward across the Pacific Ocean, reaching the coastal waters of North America after about 5â6 years. Tentatively assuming a value of 10 PBq for the net 137Cs input during the first weeks after the Fukushima incident, the simulation suggests a rapid dilution of peak radioactivity values to about 10 Bq mâ3 during the first two years, followed by a gradual decline to 1â2 Bq mâ3 over the next 4â7 years. The total peak radioactivity levels would then still be about twice the pre-Fukushima values
Work restructuring and changing craft identity: the Tale of the Disaffected Weavers (or what happens when the rug is pulled from under your feet)
This article explores the changes in worker identity that can occur during manufacturing restructuring â specifically those linked to the declining status of craft work â through an in-depth case study of Weaveco, a UK carpet manufacturer. An analysis of changes in the labour process is followed by employee reactions centred on the demise of the traditional craft identity of male carpet weavers. The voices of the weavers dramatize the tensions involved in reconstructing their masculine identity, and we consider the implications this has for understanding gendered work relations
Cold vs. warm water route â sources for the upper limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation revisited in a high-resolution ocean model
The northward flow of the upper limb of the
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is fed by waters entering
the South Atlantic from the Indian Ocean mainly via the Agulhas Current (AC)
system and by waters entering from the Pacific through Drake Passage (DP),
commonly referred to as the âwarmâ and âcoldâ water routes, respectively.
However, there is no final consensus on the relative importance of these two
routes for the upper limb's volume transport and thermohaline properties. In
this study we revisited the AC and DP contributions by performing Lagrangian
analyses between the two source regions and the North Brazil Current (NBC) at
6â S in a realistically forced high-resolution (1â20â)
ocean model.
Our results
agree with the prevailing conception that the AC contribution is the major
source for the upper limb transport of the AMOC in the tropical South
Atlantic. However, they also suggest a non-negligible DP contribution of
around 40 %, which is substantially higher than estimates from
previous Lagrangian studies with coarser-resolution models but now better
matches estimates from Lagrangian observations. Moreover, idealized analyses
of decadal changes in the DP and AC contributions indicate that the ongoing
increase in Agulhas leakage indeed may have induced an increase in the AC
contribution to the upper limb of the AMOC in the tropics, while the DP
contribution decreased. In terms of thermohaline properties, our study
highlights the fact that the AC and DP contributions cannot be unambiguously
distinguished by their temperature, as the commonly adopted terminology may
imply, but rather by their salinity when entering the South Atlantic. During
their transit towards the NBC the bulk of DP waters experiences a net density
loss through a net warming, whereas the bulk of AC waters experiences a
slight net density gain through a net increase in salinity. Notably, these
density changes are nearly completely captured by Lagrangian particle
trajectories that reach the surface mixed layer at least once during their
transit, which amount to 66 % and 49 % for DP and AC
waters, respectively. This implies that more than half of the water masses
supplying the upper limb of the AMOC are actually formed within the South
Atlantic and do not get their characteristic properties in the Pacific and
Indian Oceans.</p
Regional Imprints of Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in the Eddy-rich Ocean Model VIKING20X
A hierarchy of global 1/4° (ORCA025) and Atlantic Ocean 1/20° nested (VIKING20X) ocean/sea-ice models is described. It is shown that the eddy-rich configurations performed in hindcasts of the past 50â60 years under CORE and JRA55-do atmospheric forcings realistically simulate the large-scale horizontal circulation, the distribution of the mesoscale, overflow and convective processes, and the representation of regional current systems in the North and South Atlantic. The representation, and in particular the long-term temporal evolution, of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) strongly depends on numerical choices for the application of freshwater fluxes. The interannual variability of the AMOC instead is highly correlated among the model experiments and also with observations, including the 2010 minimum observed by RAPID at 26.5° N pointing at a dominant role of the forcing. Regional observations in western boundary current systems at 53° N, 26.5° N and 11° S are explored in respect to their ability to represent the AMOC and to monitor the temporal evolution of the AMOC. Apart from the basin-scale measurements at 26.5° N, it is shown that in particular the outflow of North Atlantic Deepwater at 53° N is a good indicator of the subpolar AMOC trend during the recent decades, if the latter is provided in density coordinates. The good reproduction of observed AMOC and WBC trends in the most reasonable simulations indicate that the eddy-rich VIKING20X is capable in representing realistic forcing-related and ocean-intrinsic trends
Radial Profiles of Star Formation in the Far Outer Regions of Galaxy Disks
Star formation in galaxies is triggered by a combination of processes,
including gravitational instabilities, spiral wave shocks, stellar compression,
and turbulence compression. Some of these persist in the far outer regions
where the column density is far below the threshold for instabilities, making
the outer disk cutoff somewhat gradual. We show that in a galaxy with a single
exponential gas profile the star formation rate can have a double exponential
with a shallow one in the inner part and a steep one in the outer part. Such
double exponentials have been observed recently in the broad-band intensity
profiles of spiral and dwarf Irregular galaxies. The break radius in our model
occurs slightly outside the threshold for instabilities provided the Mach
number for compressive motions remains of order unity to large radii. The ratio
of the break radius to the inner exponential scale length increases for higher
surface brightness disks because the unstable part extends further out. This is
also in agreement with observations. Galaxies with extended outer gas disks
that fall more slowly than a single exponential, such as 1/R, can have their
star formation rate scale approximately as a single exponential with radius,
even out to 10 disk scale lengths. Halpha profiles should drop much faster than
the star formation rate as a result of the rapidly decreasing ambient density.Comment: To appear in ApJ. Available from
ftp.lowell.edu/pub/dah/papers/sfouterdisks
Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
The ability to control and tune interactions in ultracold atomic gases has
paved the way towards the realization of new phases of matter. Whereas
experiments have so far achieved a high degree of control over short-ranged
interactions, the realization of long-range interactions would open up a whole
new realm of many-body physics and has become a central focus of research.
Rydberg atoms are very well-suited to achieve this goal, as the van der Waals
forces between them are many orders of magnitude larger than for ground state
atoms. Consequently, the mere laser excitation of ultracold gases can cause
strongly correlated many-body states to emerge directly when atoms are
transferred to Rydberg states. A key example are quantum crystals, composed of
coherent superpositions of different spatially ordered configurations of
collective excitations. Here we report on the direct measurement of strong
correlations in a laser excited two-dimensional atomic Mott insulator using
high-resolution, in-situ Rydberg atom imaging. The observations reveal the
emergence of spatially ordered excitation patterns in the high-density
components of the prepared many-body state. They have random orientation, but
well defined geometry, forming mesoscopic crystals of collective excitations
delocalised throughout the gas. Our experiment demonstrates the potential of
Rydberg gases to realise exotic phases of matter, thereby laying the basis for
quantum simulations of long-range interacting quantum magnets.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Disk evolution since z=1 in a CDM Universe
Increasingly large populations of disk galaxies are now being observed at
increasingly high redshifts, providing new constraints on our knowledge of how
such galaxies evolve. Are these observations consistent with a cosmology in
which structures form hierarchically? To probe this question, we employ
SPH/N-body galaxy scale simulations of late-type galaxies. We examine the
evolution of these simulated disk galaxies from redshift 1 to 0, looking at the
mass-size and luminosity-size relations, and the thickness parameter, defined
as the ratio of scale-height to scale-length. The structural parameters of our
simulated disks settle down quickly, and after redshift z=1 the galaxies evolve
to become only slightly flatter. Our present day simulated galaxies are larger,
more massive, less bright, and redder than at z=1. The inside-out nature of the
growth of our simulated galaxies reduces, and perhaps eliminates, expectations
of evolution in the size-mass relation.Comment: accepted version, to appear in ApJ 01 March 2006, v63
The response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to recent climate change
Observations show a significant intensification of the Southern Hemisphere westerlies, the prevailing winds between the latitudes of 30° and 60° S, over the past decades. A continuation of this intensification trend is projected by climate scenarios for the twenty-first century. The response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the carbon sink in the Southern Ocean to changes in wind stress and surface buoyancy fluxes is under debate. Here we analyse the Argo network of profiling floats and historical oceanographic data to detect coherent hemispheric-scale warming and freshening trends that extend to depths of more than 1,000 m. The warming and freshening is partly related to changes in the properties of the water masses that make up the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which are consistent with the anthropogenic changes in heat and freshwater fluxes suggested by climate models. However, we detect no increase in the tilt of the surfaces of equal density across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, in contrast to coarse-resolution model studies. Our results imply that the transport in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and meridional overturning in the Southern Ocean are insensitive to decadal changes in wind stress
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