Publication Date:
2022-06-21
Description:
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(6),(2022): 1191-1204, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0242.1.
Description:
A simplified quasigeostrophic (QG) analytical model together with an idealized numerical model are used to study the effect of uneven ice–ocean stress on the temporal evolution of the geostrophic current under sea ice. The tendency of the geostrophic velocity in the QG model is given as a function of the lateral gradient of vertical velocity and is further related to the ice–ocean stress with consideration of a surface boundary layer. Combining the analytical and numerical solutions, we demonstrate that the uneven stress between the ice and an initially surface-intensified, laterally sheared geostrophic current can drive an overturning circulation to trigger the displacement of isopycnals and modify the vertical structure of the geostrophic velocity. When the near-surface isopycnals become tilted in the opposite direction to the deeper ones, a subsurface velocity core is generated (via geostrophic setup). This mechanism should help understand the formation of subsurface currents in the edge of Chukchi and Beaufort Seas seen in observations. Furthermore, our solutions reveal a reversed flow extending from the bottom to the middepth, suggesting that the ice-induced overturning circulation potentially influences the currents in the deep layers of the Arctic Ocean, such as the Atlantic Water boundary current.
Description:
This work was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2017YFA0604600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 41676019), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2019B81214), the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant KYCX19_0384), and the National Science Foundation (MAS, Grants OPP-1822334, OCE-2122633).
Keywords:
Arctic
;
Sea ice
;
Channel flows
;
Vertical motion
;
Ekman pumping
;
Idealized models
;
Quasigeostrophic models
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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