Sea level changes forced by Southern Ocean winds
نویسندگان
چکیده
[1] On regional scales, changes in sea level are significantly affected by local dynamical changes. Westerly winds over the Southern Ocean have been strengthening and shifting southward in recent decades, and this change is projected to continue in the future. This study applies wind forcing anomalies to an eddy-permitting ocean model to study the dynamical response to a Southern Hemisphere westerly wind increase and/or southward shift. It is shown that the applied wind anomalies result in a change in sea surface slope across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current such that a fall in sea level occurs around the Antarctic continental margin. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current transport and regional sea level are particularly sensitive to latitudinal shifts in the wind, with a much more muted response found when only wind strengthening is applied. In addition to the local sea level changes, Southern Ocean winds also have a global effect through changing ocean heat content and the global overturning circulation. Citation: Frankcombe, L. M., P. Spence, A. McC. Hogg, M. H. England, and S. M. Griffies (2013), Sea level changes forced by Southern Ocean winds, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 5710–5715, doi:10.1002/2013GL058104.
منابع مشابه
The Late Quaternary Flow Through the Bering Strait Has Been Forced by the Southern Ocean Winds
Because North and South America are surrounded by water, they constitute together a gigantic island whose peripheral sea level is controlled by the winds east of the island, winds along the western boundary of the island, the freshwater fiux, and the meridional overturning cell. This idea has been expressed in several articles where a series of analytical models show that the Bering Strait (BS)...
متن کاملAn empirical stochastic model of sea-surface temperatures and surface winds over the Southern Ocean
This study employs NASA’s recent satellite measurements of sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea-level winds (SLWs) with missing data filled-in by Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA), to construct empirical models that capture both intrinsic and SST-dependent aspects of SLW variability. The model construction methodology uses a number of algorithmic innovations that are essential in providing st...
متن کاملSeasonal Variations of Upper Ocean Transport from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean via Indonesian Straits*
Seasonal variations of upper-ocean mass transport between the Pacific and Indian Oceans via the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) are examined using numerical experiments with a 11⁄2-layer, reduced-gravity model forced with specific climatological winds. The model ITF transport, computed as a sum of through-strait transport, has an annual range of more than 8 Sv (an annual harmonic of amplitude 4.2 ...
متن کاملA Southern Ocean trigger for Northwest Pacific ventilation during the Holocene?
Holocene ocean circulation is poorly understood due to sparsity of dateable marine archives with submillennial-scale resolution. Here we present a record of mid-depth water radiocarbon contents in the Northwest (NW) Pacific Ocean over the last 12.000 years, which shows remarkable millennial-scale variations relative to changes in atmospheric radiocarbon inventory. Apparent decoupling of these v...
متن کاملPrediction of sea level anomalies using ocean circulation model forced by scatterometer wind and validation using TOPEX/Poseidon data
—Uncertainties in the surface wind field have long been recognized as a major limitation in the interpretation of results obtained by oceanic circulation models. It is especially true in the tropical oceans, where the response to wind forcing is very strong on short time scales. The purpose of this paper is to show that these uncertainties can be greatly reduced by using spaceborne wind sensors...
متن کامل