In the Southern Ocean, mixing and upwelling in the presence of heat and freshwater surface fluxes transform subpycnocline water to lighter densities as part of the upward branch of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). One hypothesized impact of this transformation is the restoration of nutrients to the global pycnocline, without which biological productivity at low latitudes would be s...

[1] Regional air-sea fluxes of anthropogenic CO2 are estimated using a Green’s function inversion method that combines data-based estimates of anthropogenic CO2 in the ocean with information about ocean transport and mixing from a suite of Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs). In order to quantify the uncertainty associated with the estimated fluxes owing to modeled transport and errors in ...

[1] Several recent papers have demonstrated a decrease in atmospheric pCO2 resulting from barriers to communication between the deep sea and the atmosphere in the Southern Ocean. Stephens and Keeling [2000] decreased pCO2 by increasing Antarctic sea ice in a seven-box model of the world ocean, and Toggweiler [1999] showed a similar response to Southern Ocean stratification. In box models the pC...

During the last deglaciation, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rose at the same time that the 114C of that CO2 fell. This has been attributed to the release of 14C-depleted carbon dioxide from the deep ocean1, possibly vented through the Southern Ocean2–5. Recently, a sediment record from the eastern North Pacific Ocean spanning the last deglaciation was interpreted to reflect transpor...

Global climate models indicate that the poleward shift of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current observed over recent decades may have been significantly human induced. The poleward shift, along with a significant increase in the transport of water around Antarctica, is predicted to continue into the future. To appreciate the magnitude of the poleward shift it is noted that by century’s end the conc...

The Southern Ocean supports diverse and unique ecosystems that have been impacted by more than two centuries of exploitation and are now experiencing rapid changes in ocean temperature and seasonal ice cover due to climate warming. Understanding and projecting responses of Southern Ocean marine ecosystems to changing climate conditions and direct human impacts, such as fisheries, requires integ...

The remote and hostile Southern Ocean is home to a diverse and rich community of life that thrives in an environment dominated by glaciations and strong currents. Marine biological studies in the region date back to the nineteenth century, but despite this long history of research, relatively little is known about the complex interactions between the highly seasonal physical environment and the...

A coupled atmosphere-ocean model is presented for El Niño and the Southern Oscillation that reproduces its major features, including its recurrence at irregular intervals. The interannual El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle is maintained by deterministic interactions in the tropical Pacific region. Ocean dynamics alter sea-surface temperature, changing the atmospheric heating; the resulting chan...

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)...

This study uses a global ocean eddy-permitting climate model to explore the export of abyssal water from the Southern Ocean and its sensitivity to projected twenty-first-century poleward-intensifying Southern Oceanwind stress. The abyssal flow pathways and transport are investigated using a combination of Lagrangian and Eulerian techniques. In an Eulerian format, the equatorand poleward flows w...