An important mechanism in redistribution of heat and salt in the ocean is
known as the global meridional overturning circulation. Oceanic overflows
contribute to the deep branches of the conveyor belt. Determining overflow
dynamics and kinematics is critical to estimating the changes in overflow
production and composition as it ultimately impacts global ocean circulation.
In this work, we first present the kinematics of a specific sea-strait, and then
study some aspects of overflow dynamics. We study the overflow of dense
water from Denmark Strait (known as Denmark Strait Overflow, DSO) which
feeds the lower limb of the conveyor belt in the northern extremity of the
Atlantic Ocean. We investigate the upstream pathways of the DSO through
the application of backward Lagrangian particle tracking in a realistic ocean
model. The Lagrangian analysis confirms the existence of previously known
branches from the North and it also reveals an additional pathway emerging
from south of Iceland. The southern pathways supply over 25% of the DSO
during winter of 2008 when the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index was
positive and can potentially change depending on the phase of the NAO. The
southern pathways mark a more direct route from the near-surface subpolar
North Atlantic to the NADW. The second part of this study involves the dynamics
of overflow pathway partitioning and the effect of upstream reservoir
on overflow production for an idealized sea-strait geometry with a continuously
varying (parabolic) cross-section. We use rotating hydraulic theory and
idealized modeling to reveal the relation between reservoir conditions, strait
geometry, and overflow transport. The results reveal that the basin circulation
intrudes more into the channel for a wide parabola with low curvature than
a narrow parabola causing large variations in the interface height near the
channel. Far enough from the channel entrance, the hydraulically controlled
flow in the strait is nearly independent of the basin circulation regardless of
the parabolic curvature. Comparing the model to theory, we find that the
measurement of the wetted edges of the flow at the critical section can be used
for prediction of the volume flux. Based on this finding, we suggest three
monitoring strategies for transport estimation and compare the estimates with
the observed values at the Faroe Bank Channel. The results show that the
estimated transports are within the range of observed values. The third part of
this work is about the effect of hydraulic control on the variability in transport
observed in some sea-straits on timescales such as the seasonal cycle. We force
our numerical model with periodic inflow in the upstream basin for subcritical
and hydraulically controlled flow to see the effect of hydraulic control on the
suppression of time variability. Results reveal that although the narrowing
and shallowing of topography lead to a local suppression of time dependence,
the hydraulic control at the sill causes a further suppression of time variability