[1] Oxygen isotopic records of meltwater outflow and records of sea level change do not support the idea that fresh waters derived solely from the melting of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets was likely to have stabilized the upper layers of the North Atlantic Ocean and prevented deep convection during the Younger Dryas. Yet there are paleoceanographic indicators that point to a pause in the forma...

[1] The 8.2 kyr event is the largest abrupt climatic change recorded in the last 10,000 years, and is widely hypothesized to have been triggered by the release of thousands of kilometers cubed of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean. Using a high‐resolution (1/6°) global, ocean‐ice circulation model we present an alternative view that freshwater discharged from glacial Lake Agassiz would ha...

[1] Significant changes of the thermohaline circulation (THC) are likely to cause abrupt climate change. Here we intend to find a simple measure to detect changes in THC through examining several factors proposed to control the THC variations using a coupled climate model. These factors are equatorial-South Atlantic upper ocean temperature, Southern Ocean freshening, inter-basin sea surface sal...

Increasing concentrations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the interior ocean are expected as a direct consequence of increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. This extra DIC is often referred to as anthropogenic carbon (Cant), and its inventory, or increase rate, in the interior ocean has previously been estimated by a multitude of observational approaches. Each of these method...

The tropospheric biennial oscillation (TBO) is conventionally considered to involve transitions between the Indian and Australian summer monsoons and the interactions between these two monsoons and the underlying Indo-Pacific Oceans. Here it is shown that, since the early 1990s, the TBO has evolved to mainly involve the transitions between the western North Pacific (WNP) and Australian monsoons...

As a key persistent component of the atmospheric dynamics, the North Atlantic blocking activity has been linked to extreme climatic phenomena in the European sector. It has also been linked to Atlantic multidecadal ocean variability, but its potential links to rapid oceanic changes have not been investigated. Using a global ocean-sea ice model forced with atmospheric reanalysis data, here it is...

Rainfall variability over the Amazon basin has often been linked to variations in Pacific sea surface temperature (SST), and in particular, to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). However, only a fraction of Amazon rainfall variability can be explained by ENSO. Building upon the recent work of Zeng (Environ Res Lett 3:014002, 2008), here we provide further evidence for an influence on Amazo...

A general circulation ocean model has been used to study the formation and propagation mechanisms of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)-generated temperature anomalies along the pathway of the North Atlantic Current (NAC). The NAO-like wind forcing generates temperature anomalies in the upper 440 m which propagate along the pathway of the NAC in general agreement with the observations. The analys...

The Baltic Sea has traditionally been considered as a semi-enclosed marginal sea with little or no inß uence on the adjacent oceans. We employ an eddy-permitting, coupled ice-ocean model of the Pan-Arctic region to study the Baltic Sea, especially its circulation and property exchanges with the North Sea and other regions. Using this high-resolution and large scale model we focus here on the fr...

[1] We use measurements of ocean surface dissolved Al, a global Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling (BEC) ocean model, and the global Dust Entrainment and Deposition (DEAD) model to constrain dust deposition to the oceans. Our Al database contains all available measurements with best coverage in the Atlantic. Vertical profiles and seasonal data exist in limited regions. Observations show that surf...