ALBERT

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 Climate 30 (2017): 1739-1751, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0200.1.

Description: The Indian Ocean has sustained robust surface warming in recent decades, but the role of multidecadal variability remains unclear. Using ocean model hindcasts, characteristics of low-frequency Indian Ocean temperature variations are explored. Simulated upper-ocean temperature changes across the Indian Ocean in the hindcast are consistent with those recorded in observational products and ocean reanalyses. Indian Ocean temperatures exhibit strong warming trends since the 1950s limited to the surface and south of 30°S, while extensive subsurface cooling occurs over much of the tropical Indian Ocean. Previous work focused on diagnosing causes of these long-term trends in the Indian Ocean over the second half of the twentieth century. Instead, the temporal evolution of Indian Ocean subsurface heat content is shown here to reveal distinct multidecadal variations associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation, and the long-term trends are thus interpreted to result from aliasing of the low-frequency variability. Transmission of the multidecadal signal occurs via an oceanic pathway through the Indonesian Throughflow and is manifest across the Indian Ocean centered along 12°S as westward-propagating Rossby waves modulating thermocline and subsurface heat content variations. Resulting low-frequency changes in the eastern Indian Ocean thermocline depth are associated with decadal variations in the frequency of Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) events, with positive IOD events unusually common in the 1960s and 1990s with a relatively shallow thermocline. In contrast, the deeper thermocline depth in the 1970s and 1980s is associated with frequent negative IOD and rare positive IOD events. Changes in Pacific wind forcing in recent decades and associated rapid increases in Indian Ocean subsurface heat content can thus affect the basin’s leading mode of variability, with implications for regional climate and vulnerable societies in surrounding countries.

Description: This research was supported by a Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, as well as the Ocean Climate Change Institute and the Investment in Science Fund at WHOI.

Description: 2017-08-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 47 (2017): 339-351, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0165.1.

Description: A novel multi-iteration statistical method for studying tracer spreading using drifter data is introduced. The approach allows for the best use of the available drifter data by making use of a simple iterative procedure, which results in the statistically probable map showing the likelihood that a tracer released at some source location would visit different geographical regions, along with the associated arrival travel times. The technique is tested using real drifter data in the North Atlantic. Two examples are considered corresponding to sources in the western and eastern North Atlantic Ocean, that is, Massachusetts Bay–like and Irish Sea–like sources, respectively. In both examples, the method worked well in estimating the statistics of the tracer transport pathways and travel times throughout the entire North Atlantic. The role of eddies versus mean flow is quantified using the same technique, and eddies are shown to significantly broaden the spread of a tracer. The sensitivity of the results to the size of the source domain is investigated and causes for this sensitivity are discussed.

Description: This work was supported by the Grant OCE-1356630 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Rypina also acknowledges NSF Grant OCE-1154641 and NASA Grant NNX14AH29G.

Description: 2017-07-31

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 47 (2017): 633-647, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0089.1.

Description: Interannual variability in the volumetric water mass distribution within the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre is described in relation to variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The relative roles of diabatic and adiabatic processes in the volume and heat budgets of the subtropical gyre are investigated by projecting data into temperature coordinates as volumes of water using an Argo-based climatology and an ocean state estimate (ECCO version 4). This highlights that variations in the subtropical gyre volume budget are predominantly set by transport divergence in the gyre. A strong correlation between the volume anomaly due to transport divergence and the variability of both thermocline depth and Ekman pumping over the gyre suggests that wind-driven heave drives transport anomalies at the gyre boundaries. This wind-driven heaving contributes significantly to variations in the heat content of the gyre, as do anomalies in the air–sea fluxes. The analysis presented suggests that wind forcing plays an important role in driving interannual variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and that this variability can be unraveled from spatially distributed hydrographic observations using the framework presented here.

Description: DGE was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship award at the University of Southampton. JMT’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant OCE-1332667). GF’s contribution was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-0961713 and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through Grant NA10OAR4310135. The contributions of JDZ and AJGN were supported by the NERC Grant ‘‘Climate scale analysis of air and water masses’’ (NE/ K012932/1). ACNG gratefully acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, and the Wolfson Foundation. LY was supported by NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team (OVWST) activities under Grant NNA10AO86G.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 47 (2017): 1291-1305, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0160.1.

Description: Along-stream variations in the dynamics of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) impact heat and tracer transport, regulate interbasin exchange, and influence closure of the overturning circulation. Topography is primarily responsible for generating deviations from zonal-mean properties, mainly through standing meanders associated with regions of high eddy kinetic energy. Here, an idealized channel model is used to explore the spatial distribution of energy exchange and its relationship to eddy geometry, as characterized by both eddy momentum and eddy buoyancy fluxes. Variations in energy exchange properties occur not only between standing meander and quasi-zonal jet regions, but throughout the meander itself. Both barotropic and baroclinic stability properties, as well as the magnitude of energy exchange terms, undergo abrupt changes along the path of the ACC. These transitions are captured by diagnosing eddy fluxes of energy and by adopting the eddy geometry framework. The latter, typically applied to barotropic stability properties, is applied here in the depth–along-stream plane to include information about both barotropic and baroclinic stability properties of the flow. These simulations reveal that eddy momentum fluxes, and thus barotropic instability, play a leading role in the energy budget within a standing meander. This result suggests that baroclinic instability alone cannot capture the dynamics of ACC standing meanders, a challenge for models where eddy fluxes are parameterized.

Description: The authors all acknowledge support from NSF OCE-1235488. MKY also acknowledges support from the AMS Graduate Student Fellowship.

Description: 2017-10-12

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June, 1982

Description: Oceanic fluctuations are dependent on geographical location. Near intense currents, the eddy field is highly energetic and has broad meridional extent. It is likely that the energy arises from instabilities of the intense current. However, the meridional extent of the linearly most unstable modes of such intense jets is much narrower than the observed region of energetic fluctuations. It is proposed here that weaker instabilities, in the linear sense, which are very weakly trapped to the current, may be the dominant waves in the far field. As a preliminary problem, the (barotropic) instability of parallel shear flow on the beta plane is discussed. An infinite zonal flow with a continuous cross-stream velocity gradient is approximated with segments of uniform flow, joined together by segments of uniform potential vorticity. This simplification allows an exact dispersion relation to be found. There are two classes of linearly unstable solutions. One type is trapped to the source of energy and has large growth rates. The second type are weaker instabilities of the shear flow which excite Rossby waves in the far field: the influence of these weaker instabilities extends far beyond that of the most unstable waves. The central focus of the thesis i: the linear stability of thin, twolayer, zonal jets on the beta plane, with both horizontal and vertical shear. The method used for the parallel shear flow is extended to the two-layer flow. Each layer of the jet has uniform velocity in the center, bordered by shear zones with zero potential vorticity gradient. The velocity in each layer outside the jet is constant in latitude. Separate linearly unstable modes arise from horizontal and vertical shear. The energy source for the vertical shear modes is nearly all potential while the source for the horizontal shear modes is both kinetic and potential. The most unstable waves are tightly trapped to the jet, within two or three deformation radii for small but nonzero beta. Rossby waves and baroclinically unstable waves (in the presence of vertical shear) exist outside the jet because of a nonzero potential vorticity gradient there. Weakly growing jet instabilities can force these waves when their phase speeds and wavelengths match. In particular, westward jets and any jets with vertical shear exterior to the jet can radiate in this sense. The radiating modes influence a large region, their decay scales inversely proportional to the growth rate. Two types of radiating instability are found: (1) a subset of the main unstable modes near marginal stability and (2) modes which appear to be destabilized neutral modes. Westward jets have more vigorously unstable radiating modes. Applications of the model are made to the eddy field south of the Gulf Stream, using data from the POLYMODE settings along 55°W and farther into the gyre at MODE. The energy decay scale and the variation of vertical structure with latitude in different frequency bands can be roughly explained by the model. The lower frequency disturbances decay more slowly and become more surface intensified in the far field. These disturbances are identified with the weak, radiating instabilities of the model. The higher frequency disturbances are more trapped and retain their vertical structure as they decay, and are identified with the trapped, strongly unstable modes of the jet.

Description: This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Office of Atmospheric Science.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 47 (2017): 1205-1220, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0258.1.

Description: The linkage among total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux in estuaries is derived analytically using salinity coordinates, revealing the simple but important relationship between total exchange flow and mixing. Mixing is defined and quantified in this paper as the dissipation of salinity variance. The method uses the conservation of volume and salt to quantify and distinguish the diahaline transport of volume (i.e., entrainment) and diahaline diffusive salt flux. A numerical model of the Hudson estuary is used as an example of the application of the method in a realistic estuary with a persistent but temporally variable exchange flow. A notable finding of this analysis is that the total exchange flow and diahaline salt flux are out of phase with respect to the spring–neap cycle. Total exchange flow reaches its maximum near minimum neap tide, but diahaline salt transport reaches its maximum during the maximum spring tide. This phase shift explains the strong temporal variation of stratification and estuarine salt content through the spring–neap cycle. In addition to quantifying temporal variation, the method reveals the spatial variation of total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux through the estuary. For instance, the analysis of the Hudson estuary indicates that diffusive salt flux is intensified in the wider cross sections. The method also provides a simple means of quantifying numerical mixing in ocean models because it provides an estimate of the total dissipation of salinity variance, which is the sum of mixing due to the turbulence closure and numerical mixing.

Description: T. Wang was supported by the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (Grant SKLEC-KF201509), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2017B03514), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA11010203). W. R. Geyer was supported by NSF Grant OCE 0926427 and ONR Grant N00014-16-1-2948. P. MacCready was supported by NSF Grant OCE-1634148.

Description: 2017-09-14

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2017

Description: This thesis investigates the evolution of the oceanic lithosphere in a broad sense from formation to subduction, in a focused case at the ridge, and in a focused case proximal to subduction. In general, alteration of the oceanic lithosphere begins at the ridge through focused and diffuse hydrothermal flow, continues off axis through low temperature circulation, and may occur approaching subduction zones as bending related faulting provides fluid pathways. In Chapter 2 I use a dataset of thousands of microearthquakes recorded at the Rainbow massif on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to characterize the processes which are responsible for the long-term, high-temperature, hydrothermal discharge found hosted in this oceanic core complex. I find that the detachment fault responsible for the uplift of the massif is inactive and that the axial valleys show no evidence for faulting or active magma intrusion. I conclude that the continuous, low-magnitude seismicity located in diffuse pattern in a region with seismic velocities indicating ultramafic host rock suggests that serpentinization may play a role in microearthquake generation but the seismic network was not capable of providing robust focal mechanism solutions to constrain the source characteristics. In Chapter 3 I find that the Juan de Fuca plate, which represents the young/hot end-member of oceanic plates, is lightly hydrated at upper crustal levels except in regions affected by propagator wakes where hydration of lower crust and upper mantle is evident. I conclude that at the subduction zone the plate is nearly dry at upper mantle levels with the majority of water contained in the crust. Finally, in Chapter 4 I examine samples of cretaceous age serpentinite sampled just before subduction at the Puerto Rico Trench. I show that these upper mantle rocks were completely serpentinized under static conditions at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Further, they subsequently underwent 100 Ma of seafloor weathering wherein the alteration products of serpentinization themselves continue to be altered. I conclude that complete hydration of the upper mantle is not the end point in the evolution of oceanic lithosphere as it spreads from the axis to subduction.

Description: Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation through grants OCE-1029305 and OCE-0961680, the Deep Ocean Exploration Institute - Ocean Ridge Initiative, and by the WHOI Academic Programs office

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 47 (2017): 85-100, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0234.1.

Description: Observations and analyses of two tidally recurring, oblique, internal hydraulic jumps at a stratified estuary mouth (Columbia River, Oregon/Washington) are presented. These hydraulic features have not previously been studied due to the challenges of both horizontally resolving the sharp gradients and temporally resolving their evolution in numerical models and traditional observation platforms. The jumps, both of which recurred during ebb, formed adjacent to two engineered lateral channel constrictions and were identified in marine radar image time series. Jump occurrence was corroborated by (i) a collocated sharp gradient in the surface currents measured via airborne along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar and (ii) the transition from supercritical to subcritical flow in the cross-jump direction via shipborne velocity and density measurements. Using a two-layer approximation, observed jump angles at both lateral constrictions are shown to lie within the theoretical bounds given by the critical internal long-wave (Froude) angle and the arrested maximum-amplitude internal bore angle, respectively. Also, intratidal and intertidal variability of the jump angles are shown to be consistent with that expected from the two-layer model, applied to varying stratification and current speed over a range of tidal and river discharge conditions. Intratidal variability of the upchannel jump angle is similar under all observed conditions, whereas the downchannel jump angle shows an additional association with stratification and ebb velocity during the low discharge periods. The observations additionally indicate that the upchannel jump achieves a stable position that is collocated with a similarly oblique bathymetric slope.

Description: We acknowledge the financial support of the Office of Naval Research under Awards N00014-10-1-0932 and N00014-13-1-0364.

Description: 2017-07-04

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 1679-1691, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0162.1.

Description: For direction-finding high-frequency (HF) radar systems, the correct separation of backscattered spectral energy due to Bragg resonant waves from that due to more complex double-scattering represents a critical first step toward attaining accurate estimates of surface currents from the range-dependent radar backscatter. Existing methods to identify this “first order” region of the spectra, generally sufficient for lower-frequency radars and low-velocity or low-surface gravity wave conditions, are more likely to fail in higher-frequency systems or locations with more variable current, wave, or noise regimes, leading to elevated velocity errors. An alternative methodology is presented that uses a single and globally relevant smoothing length scale, careful pretreatment of the spectra, and marker-controlled watershed segmentation, an image processing technique, to separate areas of spectral energy due to surface currents from areas of spectral energy due to more complex scattering by the wave field or background noise present. Applied to a number of HF radar datasets with a range of operating frequencies and characteristic issues, the new methodology attains a higher percentage of successful first-order identification, particularly during complex current and wave conditions. As operational radar systems continue to expand to more systematically cover areas of high marine traffic, close approaches to ports and harbors, or offshore energy installations, use of this type of updated methodology will become increasingly important to attain accurate current estimates that serve both research and operational interests.

Description: This analysis was supported by internal funds from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: 2018-02-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 46 (2016): 3599-3621, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0085.1.

Description: At continental margins, energetic deep-ocean eddies can transport shelf water offshore in filaments that wrap around the eddy. One example is that of Gulf Stream warm-core rings interacting with the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf. The rate at which shelf water is exported in these filaments is a major unknown in regional budgets of volume, heat, and salt. This unknown transport is constrained using a series of idealized primitive equation numerical experiments wherein a surface-intensified anticyclonic eddy interacts with idealized shelf–slope topography. There is no shelfbreak front in these experiments, and shelf water is tracked using a passive tracer. When anticyclones interact with shelf–slope topography, they suffer apparent intrusions of shelf–slope water, resulting in a subsurface maximum in offshore transport. The simulations help construct an approximate model for the filament of exported water that originates inshore of any given isobath. This model is then used to derive an expression for the total volume of shelf–slope water transported by the eddy across that isobath. The transport scales with water depth, radius, and azimuthal velocity scale of the eddy. The resulting expression can be used with satellite-derived eddy properties to estimate approximate real-world transports ignoring the presence of a shelfbreak front. The expression assumes that the eddy’s edge is at the shelf break, a condition not always satisfied by real eddies.

Description: The research presented here was funded by NSF Grants OCE-1059632 and OCE-1433953. Funding support from the Academic Programs Office, and WHOI is also gratefully acknowledged.

Description: 2017-06-08

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. 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 Climate 30 (2017): 9679-9702, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0707.1.

Description: The North Atlantic atmospheric circulation response to the meridional shifts of the Gulf Stream (GS) path is examined using a large ensemble of high-resolution hemispheric-scale Weather Research and Forecasting Model simulations. The model is forced with a broad range of wintertime sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies derived from a lag regression on a GS index. The primary result of the model experiments, supported in part by an independent analysis of a reanalysis dataset, is that the large-scale quasi-steady North Atlantic circulation response is remarkably nonlinear about the sign and amplitude of the SST anomaly chosen over a wide range of GS shift scenarios. The nonlinear response prevails over the weak linear response and resembles the negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the leading intrinsic mode of variability in the model and the observations. Further analysis of the associated dynamics reveals that the nonlinear responses are accompanied by the shift of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet, which is reinforced, with nearly equal importance, by the high-frequency transient eddy feedback and the low-frequency wave-breaking events. Additional sensitivity simulations confirm that the nonlinearity of the circulation response is a robust feature found over the broad parameter space encompassing not only the varied SST but also the absence/presence of tropical influence, the varying lateral boundary conditions, and the initialization scheme. The result highlights the fundamental importance of the intrinsically nonlinear transient eddy dynamics and the eddy–mean flow interactions in generating the nonlinear downstream response to the meridional shifts in the Gulf Stream.

Description: The authors are grateful for the support from NASA (NNX13AM59G) and the NSF (AGS-1355339, OCE-1419235).

Description: 2018-05-07