Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Progress In Oceanography 82 (2009): 281-325, doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2009.08.002.
Description:
To address questions concerning the intensity and spatial structure of the 3–dimensional
circulation within the Pacific Ocean and the associated advective and diffusive property flux
divergences, data from approximately 3000 high–quality hydrographic stations collected on
40 zonal and meridional cruises have been merged into a physically consistent model. The
majority of the stations were occupied as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment
(WOCE), which took place in the 1990s. These data are supplemented by a few pre–WOCE
surveys of similar quality, and time–averaged direct–velocity and historical hydrographic
measurements about the equator.
An inverse box model formalism is employed to estimate the absolute along–isopycnal
velocity field, the magnitude and spatial distribution of the associated diapycnal flow and
the corresponding diapycnal advective and diffusive property flux divergences. The resulting
large–scale WOCE Pacific circulation can be described as two shallow overturning cells
at mid– to low latitudes, one in each hemisphere, and a single deep cell which brings abyssal
waters from the Southern Ocean into the Pacific where they upwell across isopycnals and
are returned south as deep waters. Upwelling is seen to occur throughout most of the basin
with generally larger dianeutral transport and greater mixing occurring at depth. The derived
pattern of ocean heat transport divergence is compared to published results based
on air–sea flux estimates. The synthesis suggests a strongly east/west oriented pattern of
air–sea heat flux with heat loss to the atmosphere throughout most of the western basins,
and a gain of heat throughout the tropics extending poleward through the eastern basins.
The calculated meridional heat transport agrees well with previous hydrographic estimates.
Consistent with many of the climatologies at a variety of latitudes as well, our meridional
heat transport estimates tend toward lower values in both hemispheres.
Description:
This work was funded by National Science Foundation grants OCE–9710102, OCE–
9712209 and OCE–0079383, and also benefited from work on closely related projects funded
by NSF grants OCE–0223421 and OCE–0623261, and NOAA grant NA17RJ1223 funded
through CICOR. For G.C.J. NASA funding came under Order W–19,314.
Keywords:
Pacific
;
Ocean circulation
;
Overturn
;
Vertical advection
;
Vertical mixing
;
Heat transport
;
Heat budget
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
Permalink
