On the Ocean’s Large-Scale Circulation near the Limit of No Vertical Mixing

By convention, the ocean’s large-scale circulation is assumed to be a thermohaline overturning driven by the addition and extraction of buoyancy at the surface and vertical mixing in the interior. Previous work suggests that the overturning should die out as vertical mixing rates are reduced to zero. In this paper, a formal energy analysis is applied to a series of ocean general circulation models to evaluate changes in the large-scale circulation over a range of vertical mixing rates. Two different model configurations are used. One has an open zonal channel and an Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). The other configuration does not. The authors find that a vigorous large-scale circulation persists at the limit of no mixing in the model with a wind-driven ACC. A wind-powered overturning circulation linked to the ACC can exist without vertical mixing and without much energy input from surface buoyancy forces.