8 research outputs found
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The effects of enhanced sea ice export from the Ross Sea on recent cooling and freshening of the Southeast Pacific
The top 2000 m of the Southern Ocean has freshened and warmed over recent decades. However, the high-latitude (south of 50°S) southeast Pacific was observed to be cooler and fresher in the years 2008-2010 compared to 2005-2007 over a wide depth range including surface, mode, and intermediate waters. The causes and impacts of this event are analyzed using the ocean—sea-ice data-assimilating Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE) and observationally based products. In 2008-2010, a strong positive Southern Annular Mode coincided with a negative El Niño Southern Oscillation and a deep Amundsen Sea Low. Enhanced meridional winds drove strong sea ice export from the eastern Ross Sea, bringing large amounts of ice to the Amundsen Sea ice edge. In 2008, together with increased precipitation, this introduced a strong freshwater anomaly that was advected eastward by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), mixing along the way. This anomaly entered the ocean interior not only as Antarctic Intermediate Water, but also as lighter Southeast Pacific Subantarctic Mode Water (SEPSAMW). A numerical particle release experiment carried out in SOSE , showed that the Ross Sea sector was the dominant source of particles reaching the SEPSAMW formation region. This suggests that large-scale climate fluctuations can induce strong interannual variability of volume and properties of SEPSAMW. These fluctuations act at different time scales: instantaneously via direct forcing, and also lagged over advective time scales of several years from upstream regions
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Author Correction : Spiraling pathways of global deep waters to the surface of the Southern Ocean
© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 9 (2018): 209, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02105-y.Correction to: Nature Communications 8:172 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00197-0; Article published online: 2 August 201
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The Effects of Enhanced Sea Ice Export from the Ross Sea on Recent Cooling and Freshening of the Southeast Pacific
Abstract
The top 2000 m of the Southern Ocean has freshened and warmed over recent decades. However, the high-latitude (south of 50°S) southeast Pacific was observed to be cooler and fresher in the years 2008–10 compared to 2005–07 over a wide depth range including surface, mode, and intermediate waters. The causes and impacts of this event are analyzed using the ocean–sea ice data-assimilating Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE) and observationally based products. In 2008–10, a strong positive southern annular mode coincided with a negative El Niño–Southern Oscillation and a deep Amundsen Sea low. Enhanced meridional winds drove strong sea ice export from the eastern Ross Sea, bringing large amounts of ice to the Amundsen Sea ice edge. In 2008, together with increased precipitation, this introduced a strong freshwater anomaly that was advected eastward by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), mixing along the way. This anomaly entered the ocean interior not only as Antarctic Intermediate Water, but also as lighter Southeast Pacific Subantarctic Mode Water (SEPSAMW). A numerical particle release experiment carried out in SOSE showed that the Ross Sea sector was the dominant source of particles reaching the SEPSAMW formation region. This suggests that large-scale climate fluctuations can induce strong interannual variability of volume and properties of SEPSAMW. These fluctuations act at different time scales: instantaneously via direct forcing and also lagged over advective time scales of several years from upstream regions
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Spiraling pathways of global deep waters to the surface of the Southern Ocean.
Upwelling of global deep waters to the sea surface in the Southern Ocean closes the global overturning circulation and is fundamentally important for oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, nutrient resupply for sustaining oceanic biological production, and the melt rate of ice shelves. However, the exact pathways and role of topography in Southern Ocean upwelling remain largely unknown. Here we show detailed upwelling pathways in three dimensions, using hydrographic observations and particle tracking in high-resolution models. The analysis reveals that the northern-sourced deep waters enter the Antarctic Circumpolar Current via southward flow along the boundaries of the three ocean basins, before spiraling southeastward and upward through the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Upwelling is greatly enhanced at five major topographic features, associated with vigorous mesoscale eddy activity. Deep water reaches the upper ocean predominantly south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with a spatially nonuniform distribution. The timescale for half of the deep water to upwell from 30° S to the mixed layer is ~60-90 years.Deep waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans upwell in the Southern Oceanbut the exact pathways are not fully characterized. Here the authors present a three dimensional view showing a spiralling southward path, with enhanced upwelling by eddy-transport at topographic hotspots
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Spiraling pathways of global deep waters to the surface of the Southern Ocean
Upwelling of global deep waters to the sea surface in the Southern Ocean closes the global overturning circulation and is fundamentally important for oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, nutrient resupply for sustaining oceanic biological production, and the melt rate of ice shelves. However, the exact pathways and role of topography in Southern Ocean upwelling remain largely unknown. Here we show detailed upwelling pathways in three dimensions, using hydrographic observations and particle tracking in high-resolution models. The analysis reveals that the northern-sourced deep waters enter the Antarctic Circumpolar Current via southward flow along the boundaries of the three ocean basins, before spiraling southeastward and upward through the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Upwelling is greatly enhanced at five major topographic features, associated with vigorous mesoscale eddy activity. Deep water reaches the upper ocean predominantly south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with a spatially nonuniform distribution. The timescale for half of the deep water to upwell from 30° S to the mixed layer is ~60–90 year
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Author Correction: Spiraling pathways of global deep waters to the surface of the Southern Ocean.
The original version of this Article contained errors in Fig. 6. In panel a, the grey highlights obscured the curves for CESM, CM2.6 and SOSE, and the labels indicating SWIR, KP, MR, PAR, and DP were inadvertently omitted. These have now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article