ALBERT

Description: The authors aim to acquaint the reader with the current state of ocean circulation models, their ability to model the present climate state and its variability, and their major shortcomings and uncertainties. They limit the discussion to three-dimensional models of the physical system. They begin by describing the basic structure of circulation models, and discussing various problems with their implementation. They give a brief overview of the types of observational data in oceanography, and the ways in which the data are used. Some results from models of the wind-driven circulation are discussed, with particular emphasis on the dynamics of mesoscale eddies. Considerable progress has been made in understanding short-term variability associated with ENSO, and the authors describe ocean-atmosphere interactions in the tropics as well as results from coupled ocean-atmosphere models for ENSO variability. Models of the thermohaline circulation are described and some emerging ideas regarding long-term changes are given.

Description: A systematic intercomparison of three realistic eddy-permitting models of the North Atlantic circulation has been performed. The models use different concepts for the discretization of the vertical coordinate, namely geopotential levels, isopycnal layers, terrain-following (sigma) coordinates, respectively. Although these models were integrated under nearly identical conditions, the resulting large-scale model circulations show substantial differences. The results demonstrate that the large-scale thermohaline circulation is very sensitive to the model representation of certain localised processes, in particular to the amount and water mass properties of the overflow across the Greenland–Scotland region, to the amount of mixing within a few hundred kilometers south of the sills, and to several other processes at small or sub-grid scales. The different behaviour of the three models can to a large extent be explained as a consequence of the different model representation of these processes.

Description: This paper shows that the mean flow of an eddy-permitting model can be altered by assimilation of surface height variability, providing that information about the mean sea surface is included, using an adaption of a statistical–dynamical method devised by Oschlies and Willebrand. We show that for a restricted depth range (about 1000 m), dynamical knowledge can make up for the null space present in surface data whose temporal extent may be too short to distinguish between vertical modes. The lack of an accurate geoid has meant that most assimilation methods, while representing variability well, have been unable to modify the mean flow to any extent. However, we show that by including several approximate forms for the mean sea surface, the mean interior flow in the upper kilometer can be rapidly adjusted towards reality by the assimilation, with the location of major current systems moved by hundreds of kilometers.

Description: Climate models used to produce global warming scenarios exhibit widely diverging responses of the thermohaline circulation (THC). To investigate the mechanisms responsible for this variability, a regional Atlantic Ocean model driven with forcing diagnosed from two coupled greenhouse gas simulations has been employed. One of the coupled models (MPI) shows an almost constant THC, the other (GFDL) shows a declining THC in the twenty-first century. The THC evolution in the regional model corresponds rather closely to that of the respective coupled simulation, that is, it remains constant when driven with the forcing from the MPI model, and declines when driven with the GFDL forcing. These findings indicate that a detailed representation of ocean processes in the region covered by the Atlantic model may not be critical for the simulation of the overall THC changes in a global warming scenario, and specifically that the coupled model’s rather coarse representation of water mass formation processes in the subpolar North Atlantic is unlikely to be the primary cause for the large differences in the THC evolution. Sensitivity experiments have confirmed that a main parameter governing the THC response to global warming is the density of the intermediate waters in the Greenland–Iceland–Norwegian Seas, which in turn influences the density of the North Atlantic Deep Water, whereas changes in the air–sea heat and freshwater fluxes over the subpolar North Atlantic are only of moderate importance, and mainly influence the interannual–decadal variability of THC. Finally, as a consequence of changing surface fluxes, the Labrador Sea convection ceases by about 2030 under both forcings (i.e., even in a situation where the overall THC is stable) indicating that the eventual breakdown of the convection is likely but need not coincide with substantial THC changes.

Description: Observations from cruises in the Arabian Sea and data from satellites are interpreted using different realizations of a multi-level primitive equation model and an eddy-permitting reduced-gravity shallow water model of the Indian Ocean. The focus is on the interannual circulation variability of the Arabian Sea, and especially of the meridional location of the Great Whirl (GW). The results suggest that the variability in the western Arabian Sea is not only due to the interannual variability in the wind field, but that a substantial part is caused by the chaotic nature of the ocean dynamics. Decreasing the friction coefficient from 1000 to 500m2s-1 in a 19o numerical reduced-gravity model, the variance of the GW location increases dramatically, and the mean position moves southward by one degree. In the eddy-permitting experiments analyzed, both mechanisms appear to determine the GW location at the onset of the GW dynamics in late summer.

Description: Global mean and eddy fields from a four-year experiment with a 1/6° × 1/5° horizontal resolution implementation of the CME North Atlantic model are presented. The time-averaged wind-driven and thermohaline circulation in the model is compared to the results of a 1/3° × 2/5° model run in very similar configuration. In general, the higher resolution results are found to confirm that the resolution of previous CME experiments is sufficient to describe many features of the large-scale circulation and water mass distribution quite well. While the increased resolution does not lead to large changes in the mean flow patterns, the variability in the model is enhanced significantly. On the other hand, however, not all aspects of the circulation have improved with resolution. The Azores Current Frontal Zone with its variability in the eastern basin is still represented very poorly. Particular attention is also directed toward the unrealistic stationary anticyclones north of Cape Hatteras and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Description: Assimilation experiments with data from the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS, 1989¯1993) were performed with a simple mixed-layer ecosystem model of dissolvedinorganic nitrogen (N), phytoplankton (P) and herbivorous zooplankton (H). Our aim is to optimize the biological model parameters, such that the misfits between model results andobservations are minimized. The utilized assimilation method is the variational adjoint technique, starting from a wide range of first-parameter guesses. A twin experiment displayedtwo kinds of solutions, when Gaussian noise was added to the model-generated data. The expected solution refers to the global minimum of the misfit model-data function, whereasthe other solution is biologically implausible and is associated with a local minimum. Experiments with real data showed either bottom-up or top-down controlled ecosystemdynamics, depending on the deep nutrient availability. To confine the solutions, an additional constraint on zooplankton biomass was added to the optimization procedure. Thisinclusion did not produce optimal model results that were consistent with observations. The modelled zooplankton biomass still exceeded the observations. From the model-datadiscrepancies systematic model errors could be determined, in particular when the chlorophyll concentration started to decline before primary production reached its maximum. Adirect comparision of measured 14C-production data with modelled phytoplankton production rates is inadequate at BATS, at least when a constant carbon to nitrogen C : N ratio isassumed for data assimilation.