Southern Ocean isopycnal mixing and ventilation changes driven by winds

Abernathey, R. and Ferreira, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3243-9774 (2015) Southern Ocean isopycnal mixing and ventilation changes driven by winds. Geophysical Research Letters, 42 (23). pp. 10357-10365. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1002/2015GL066238

Abstract/Summary

Observed and predicted changes in the strength of the westerly winds blowing over the Southern Ocean have motivated a number of studies of the response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and Southern Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) to wind perturbations and led to the discovery of the``eddy-compensation" regime, wherein the MOC becomes insensitive to wind changes. In addition to the MOC, tracer transport also depends on mixing processes. Here we show, in a high-resolution process model, that isopycnal mixing by mesoscale eddies is strongly dependent on the wind strength. This dependence can be explained by mixing-length theory and is driven by increases in eddy kinetic energy; the mixing length does not change strongly in our simulation. Simulation of a passive ventilation tracer (analogous to CFCs or anthropogenic CO$_2$) demonstrates that variations in tracer uptake across experiments are dominated by changes in isopycnal mixing, rather than changes in the MOC. We argue that, to properly understand tracer uptake under different wind-forcing scenarios, the sensitivity of isopycnal mixing to winds must be accounted for.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/52908
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item