Status: this preprint is open for discussion and under review for Ocean Science (OS).
The Arctic overturning circulation: transformations, pathways and timescales
Jakob Simon Dörr,Carlo Jeffrey Mans,Marius Årthun,Kristofer Döös,Dafydd Gwyn Evans,and Yanchun He
Abstract. The Arctic is the northernmost terminus of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and is an important source of the densest waters feeding its lower limb. However, relatively little is known about the structure and timescales of the Arctic overturning circulation, and which pathways contribute most to the transformation of Atlantic Waters into dense waters and Polar Waters. In this work, we combine a Eulerian water mass transformation framework and Lagrangian tracking to decompose the time-mean Arctic overturning circulation in an eddy-rich (1/12˚) global ocean hindcast (1979–2015). We show that the Atlantic Water branch through the Barents Sea dominates dense Arctic overturning, and that a large portion of these transformed waters takes many decades to exit Fram Strait. Furthermore, we show that surface forcing in the Barents Sea and north of Svalbard dominates dense overturning, but local subsurface mixing with shelf waters and between the two Atlantic Water branches plays an important role for the Fram Strait branch. Our work identifies the dominant processes of the Arctic overturning circulation, and contributes to understanding its future changes and their impact on the stability of northern overturning.
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The Arctic Ocean plays a key role in the global ocean circulation by producing dense waters that feed the lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). We use a high-resolution ocean simulation to investigate the pathways and mechanisms through which these dense waters are formed in the Arctic. Our results show that surface cooling in the Barents Sea dominates the dense water production, but that internal mixing plays a role at high densities.
The Arctic Ocean plays a key role in the global ocean circulation by producing dense waters that...
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