The vertical structure of ocean heat transport

Boccaletti, G., Ferrari, R., Adcroft, A., Ferreira, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3243-9774 and Marshall, J. (2005) The vertical structure of ocean heat transport. Geophysical Research Letters, 32 (10). ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1029/2005GL022474

Abstract/Summary

One of the most important contributions the ocean makes to Earth's climate is through its poleward heat transport: about 1.5 PW or more than 30% of that accomplished by the ocean-atmosphere system (Trenberth and Caron, 2001). Recently, concern has arisen over whether global warming could affect this heat transport (Watson et al., 2001), for example, reducing high latitude convection and triggering a collapse of the deep overturning circulation (Rahmstorf, 1995). While the consequences of abrupt changes in oceanic circulation should be of concern, we argue that the attention devoted to deep circulations is disproportionate to their role in heat transport. For this purpose, we introduce a heat function which identifies the contribution to the heat transport by different components of the oceanic circulation. A new view of the ocean emerges in which a shallow surface intensified circulation dominates the poleward heat transport.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/34264
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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