An essential element of modern ocean circulation and climate is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which includes deep-water formation in the subarctic North Atlantic. However, a comparable overturning circulation is absent in the Pacific, the world's largest ocean, where relatively fresh surface waters inhibit North Pacific deep convection. We present complementary measure...

During November and December 1983, two anticyclonic eddies were observed west of the Agulhas Retroflection, apparently spawned at the retroflection. The western eddy, centered 300 kilometers southwest of Cape Town, has a winter cooled core encircled by warm Indian Ocean water. Between Cape Town and the "Cape Town Eddy" is a net geostrophic transport of Indian Ocean thermocline water (14 x 10(6)...

The Atlantic Ocean is a long sinuous ocean which originated during the Mesozoic following the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangea. For most of its length, the eastern and western boundaries are clearly defined by land masses, except where it is separated from the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico by troughs and trenches. The northern and southern limits are more difficult to define. To the n...

[1] Paleonutrient proxies currently provide the strongest constraints on the past spatial distribution of deep water masses. We review the state of knowledge derived from the trace metal proxy Cd/Ca for the Atlantic Ocean during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We compile published benthic foraminiferal Cd/Ca data, supplemented with new data, to reconstruct meridional Cd sections through the Hol...

[1] A growing number of paleoceanographic observations suggest that the ocean’s deep ventilation is stronger in warm climates than in cold climates. Here we use a general ocean circulation model to test the hypothesis that this relation is due to the reduced sensitivity of seawater density to temperature at low mean temperature; that is, at lower temperatures the surface cooling is not as effec...

The heat and salt input from the Indian to Atlantic Oceans by Agulhas Leakage is found to influence the Atlantic overturning circulation in a low-resolution Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM). The model used is the Hamburg Large-Scale Geostrophic (LSG) model, which is forced by mixed boundary conditions. Agulhas Leakage is parameterized by sources of heat and salt in the upper South Atlanti...

Neodymium isotope ratios in the authigenic ferromanganese oxide component in a southeastern Atlantic core reveal a history of the global overturning circulation intensity through the last deglaciation. From a minimum during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) began to strengthen between 18 and 17 kyr cal. BP, approximately 2000–3000 years before the Bølling warming....

High-latitude rivers supply the Arctic Ocean with a disproportionately large share of global riverine discharge and terrigenous dissolved organic matter (DOM). We used the abundance of lignin, a macromolecule unique to vascular plants, and stable carbon isotope ratios (d13C) to trace the high molecular weight fraction of terrigenous DOM in major water masses of the Arctic Ocean. Lignin oxidatio...

[1] The distributions of deep ocean DC data are often used to illustrate the rate of deep ocean circulation. The associated conventional C ages show a difference of 1000 years between the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean and a difference of another 1000 years between the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. These differences may be interpreted directly and mistakenly as the timescale of c...

This paper compares the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in global simulations performed with the depth coordinate Parallel Ocean Program (POP) ocean model and with the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) under different surface salinity boundary conditions. When forced by the Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiment (CORE) repeat Normal Year Forcing, HYCOM develops intern...