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  • Photosystem II  (828)
  • Baroclinic flows
  • Ocean circulation
  • Elsevier  (831)
  • American Meteorological Society  (99)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  (89)
  • Annual Reviews
  • 1
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2007.
    Description: The water circulation and evolution of water temperature over the inner continental shelf are investigated using observations of water velocity, temperature, density, and bottom pressure; surface gravity waves; wind stress; and heat flux between the ocean and atmosphere during 2001-2007. When waves are small, cross-shelf wind stress is the dominant mechanism driving cross-shelf circulation. The along-shelf wind stress does not drive a substantial cross-shelf circulation. The response to a given wind stress is stronger in summer than winter. The cross-shelf transport in the surface layer during winter agrees with a two-dimensional, unstratified model. During large waves and onshore winds the cross-shelf velocity is nearly vertically uniform, because the wind- and wave-driven shears cancel. During large waves and offshore winds the velocity is strongly vertically sheared because the wind- and wave-driven shears have the same sign. The subtidal, depth-average cross-shelf momentum balance is a combination of geostrophic balance and a coastal set-up and set-down balance driven by the cross-shelf wind stress. The estimated wave radiation stress gradient is also large. The dominant along-shelf momentum balance is between the wind stress and pressure gradient, but the bottom stress, acceleration, Coriolis, Hasselmann wave stress, and nonlinear advection are not negligible. The fluctuating along-shelf pressure gradient is a local sea level response to wind forcing, not a remotely generated pressure gradient. In summer, the water is persistently cooled due to a mean upwelling circulation. The cross-shelf heat flux nearly balances the strong surface heating throughout midsummer, so the water temperature is almost constant. The along-shelf heat flux divergence is apparently small. In winter, the change in water temperature is closer to that expected due to the surface cooling. Heat transport due to surface gravity waves is substantial.
    Description: My last three years of thesis work were supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Headquarters under the Earth System Science Fellowship Grant NNG04GQ14H, and by WHOI Academic Programs Fellowship Funds. I also benefited from the freedom of a Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship during my first year in the Joint Program, which allowed me more time than is usual to explore different research topics before choosing an advisor. This research was also funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant NNG04GL03G and the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation under grants OCE-0241292 and OCE-0548961. The Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory is partly funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Jewett/EDUC/Harrison Foundation. The ADCP deployments at CBLAST site F were funded by National Science Foundation Small Grant for Exploratory Research OCE-0337892. Ship time for deployment and recovery of the F ADCP was provided by Robert Weller through Office of Naval Research contracts N00014-01-1-0029 and N00014-05-10090 for the Low-Wind Component of the Coupled Boundary Layers Air-Sea Transfer Experiment.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean-atmosphere interaction
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 2
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2009
    Description: Interaction between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the continental slope/shelf in the Marguerite Bay and west Antarctic Peninsula is examined as interaction between a wind-driven channel flow and a zonally uniform slope with a bay-shaped shelf to the south. Two control mechanisms, eddy advection and propagation of topographic waves, are identified in barotropic vortex-escarpment interactions. The two mechanisms advect the potential vorticity (PV) perturbations in opposite directions in anticyclone-induced interactions but in the same direction in cyclone-induced interactions, resulting in dramatic differences in the two kinds of interactions. The topographic waves become more nonlinear near the western(eastern if in the Northern Hemisphere) boundary of the bay, where strong cross-escarpment motion occurs. In the interaction between a surface anticyclone and a slope penetrating into the upper layer in a two-layer isopycnal model, the eddy advection decays on length scales on the order of the internal deformation radius, so shoreward over a slope that is wider than the deformation radius, the wave mechanism becomes noticeably significant. It acts to spread the cross-isobath transport in a much wider range while the transport directly driven by the anticyclone is concentrated in space. A two-layer wind-driven channel flow is constructed to the north of the slope in the Southern Hemisphere, spontaneously generating eddies through baroclinic instability. A PV front forms in the first layer shoreward of the base of the topography due to the lower-layer eddy-slope interactions. Perturbed by the jet in the center of the channel, the front interacts with the slope/shelf persistently yet episodically, driving a clockwise mean circulation within the bay as well as crossisobath transport. Both the transports across the slope edge and out of the bay are comparable with the maximum Ekman transport in the channel, indicative of the significance of the examined mechanism. The wave-boundary interaction identified in the barotropic model is found essential for the out-of-bay transport and responsible for the heterogeneity of the transport within the bay. Much more water is transported out of the bay from the west than from the east, and the southeastern area is the most isolated region. These results suggest that strong out-of-bay transport may be found near the western boundary of the Marguerite Bay while the southeastern region is a retention area where high population of Antarctic krill may be found.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Ocean circulation
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 3
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1987
    Description: Several problems connected by the theme of thermal forcing are addressed herein. The main topic is the stratification and flow field resulting from imposing a specified heat flux on a fluid that is otherwise confined to a rigid insulating basin. In addition to the traditional eddy viscosity and diffusivity, turbulent processes are also included by a convective overturning adjustment at locations where the local density field is unstable. Two classes of problems are treated. The first is the large scale meridional pattern of a fluid in an annulus. The detailed treatment is carried out in two steps. In the beginning (chapter 2) it is assumed that the fluid is very diffusive, hence, to first approximation no flow field is present. It is found that the convective overturning adjustment changes the character of the stratification in all the regions that are cooled from the top, resulting in a temperature field that is nearly depth independent in the northernmost latitudes. The response to a seasonal cycle in the forcing, and the differences between averaging the results from the end of each season compared to driving the fluid by a mean forcing are analyzed. In particular, the resulting sea surface temperature is warmer in the former procedure. This observation is important in models where the heat flux is sensitive to the gradient of air to sea surface temperatures. The analysis of the problem continues in chapter 5 where the contribution of the flow field is included in the same configuration. The dimensionless parameter controlling the circulation is now the Rayleigh number, which is a measure of the relative importance of gravitational and viscous forces. The effects of the convective overturning adjustment is investigated at different Rayleigh numbers. It is shown that not only is the stratification now always stable, but also that the vigorous vertical mixing reduces the effective Rayleigh number; thereby the flow field is more moderate, the thermocline deepens, and the horizontal surface temperature gradients are weaker. The interior of the fluid is colder compared to cases without convective overturning, and, because the amount of heat in the system is assumed to be fixed, the surface temperature is warmer. The fluid is not only forced by a mean heat flux, or a seasonally varying one, but its behavior under permanent winter and summer conditions is also investigated. A steady state for the experiments where the net heat flux does not vanish is defined as that state where the flow field and temperature structure are not changing with time except for an almost uniform temperature decrease or increase everywhere. It is found that when winter conditions prevail the circulation is very strong, while it is rather weak for continuous summer forcing. In contrast to those results, if a yearly cycle is imposed, the circulation tends to reach a minimum in the winter time and a maximum in the summer. This suggests that, depending on the Rayleigh number, there is a phase leg of several months between the response of the ocean and the imposed forcing. Differences between the two averaging procedures mentioned before are also observed when the flow field is present, especially for large Rayleigh numbers. The circulation is found to be weaker and the sea surface temperature colder in the mean of the seasonal realizations compared to the steady state derived by the mean forcing. As an extension to the numerical results, an analytic model is presented in chapter 4 for a similar annular configuration. The assumed dynamics is a bit different, with a mixed layer on top of a potential vorticity conserving interior. It is demonstrated that the addition of the thermal wind balance to the conservation of potential vorticity in the axially symmetric problem leads to the result that typical fluid trajectories in the interior are straight lines pointing downward going north to south. The passage of information in the system is surprisingly in the opposite sense to the clockwise direction of the flow. A model for water mass formation by buoyancy loss in the absence of a flow field is introduced in chapter 3. The idea behind it is to use the turbulent mixing parameterization to generate chimney-like structures in open water, followed by along-isopycnal advection and diffusion. This model can be applied to many observations of mode water. In particular, in this work it is related to the chimneys observed by the MEDOC Group (1970), and the Levantine Intermediate Water in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin. An analytic prediction of the depth of the water mass is derived and depends on the forcing and initial stratification. It suggests that the depth of shallow mode water like the 18°C water or the Levantine Intermediate Water would not be very sensitive to reasonable changes in atmospheric forcing. Similar conclusions were also reached by Warren (1972) by assuming that the temperature in the thermocline decreases linearly with depth, and by approximating the energy balance in a water column by a Newtonian cooling law.
    Keywords: Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Ocean circulation
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 1075-1086, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4375.1.
    Description: A quasigeostrophic, two-layer model is used to study the baroclinic circulation around a thin, meridionally elongated island. The flow is driven by either buoyancy forcing or wind stress, each of whose structure would produce an antisymmetric double-gyre flow. The ocean bottom is flat. When the island partially straddles the intergyre boundary, fluid from one gyre is forced to flow into the other. The amount of the intergyre flow depends on the island constant, that is, the value of the geostrophic streamfunction on the island in each layer. That constant is calculated in a manner similar to earlier studies and is determined by the average, along the meridional length of the island, of the interior Sverdrup solution just to the east of the island. Explicit solutions are given for both buoyancy and wind-driven flows. The presence of an island of nonzero width requires the determination of the baroclinic streamfunction on the basin’s eastern boundary. The value of the boundary term is proportional to the island’s area. This adds a generally small additional baroclinic intergyre flow. In all cases, the intergyre flow produced by the island is not related to topographic steering of the flow but rather the pressure anomaly on the island as manifested by the barotropic and baroclinic island constants. The vertical structure of the flow around the island is a function of the parameterization of the vertical mixing in the problem and, in particular, the degree to which long baroclinic Rossby waves can traverse the basin before becoming thermally damped.
    Description: This research was supported in part by NSF Grant OCE 0451086.
    Keywords: Gyres ; Baroclinic flows ; Topographic effects ; Streamfunction ; Orographic effects
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 1486–1500, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3767.1.
    Description: Fits of an annual harmonic to depth-average along-shelf current time series longer than 200 days from 27 sites over the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB) continental shelf have amplitudes of a few centimeters per second. These seasonal variations are forced by seasonal variations in the wind stress and the cross-shelf density gradient. The component of wind stress that drives the along-shelf flow over most of the MAB mid- and outer shelf is oriented northeast–southwest, perpendicular to the major axis of the seasonal variation in the wind stress. Consequently, there is not a significant seasonal variation in the wind-driven along-shelf flow, except over the southern MAB shelf and the inner shelf of New England where the wind stress components forcing the along-shelf flow are north–south and east–west, respectively. The seasonal variation in the residual along-shelf flow, after removing the wind-driven component, has an amplitude of a few centimeters per second with maximum southwestward flow in spring onshore of the 60-m isobath and autumn offshore of the 60-m isobath. The spring maximum onshore of the 60-m isobath is consistent with the maximum river discharges in spring enhancing cross-shelf salinity gradients. The autumn maximum offshore of the 60-m isobath and a steady phase increase with water depth offshore of Cape Cod are both consistent with the seasonal variation in the cross-shelf temperature gradient associated with the development and destruction of a near-bottom pool of cold water over the mid and outer shelf (“cold pool”) due to seasonal variations in surface heat flux and wind stress.
    Description: This research was funded by the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-820773, OCE-841292, and OCE- 848961.
    Keywords: Seasonal variability ; Ocean circulation ; Continental shelf ; Wind stress ; Density currents
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  • 6
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 1091-1106, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3805.1.
    Description: A model of deep ocean circulation driven by turbulent mixing is produced in a long, rectangular laboratory tank. The salinity difference is substituted for the thermal difference between tropical and polar regions. Freshwater gently flows in at the top of one end, dense water enters at the same rate at the top of the other end, and an overflow in the middle removes the same amount of surface water as is pumped in. Mixing is provided by a rod extending from top to bottom of the tank and traveling back and forth at constant speed with Reynolds numbers 〉500. A stratified upper layer (“thermocline”) deepens from the mixing and spreads across the entire tank. Simultaneously, a turbulent plume (“deep ocean overflow”) from a dense-water source descends through the layer and supplies bottom water, which spreads over the entire tank floor and rises into the upper layer to arrest the upper-layer deepening. Data are taken over a wide range of parameters and compared to scaling theory, energetic considerations, and simple models of turbulently mixed fluid. There is approximate agreement with a simple theory for Reynolds number 〉1000 in experiments with a tank depth less than the thermocline depth. A simple argument shows that mixing and plume potential energy flux rates are equal in magnitude, and it is suggested that the same is approximately true for the ocean.
    Description: The research was supported by the Ocean Climate Change Institute of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Mixing ; In situ observations ; Vertical motion
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  • 7
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 1267-1277, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3906.1.
    Description: A two-layer quasigeostrophic model in a channel is used to study the influence of lateral displacements of regions of different sign mean potential vorticity gradient (Πy) on the growth rate and structure of linearly unstable waves. The mean state is very idealized, with a region of positive Πy in the upper layer and a region of negative Πy in the lower layer; elsewhere Πy is zero. The growth rate and structure of the model’s unstable waves are quite sensitive to the amount of overlap between the two regions. For large amounts of overlap (more than several internal deformation radii), the channel modes described by Phillips’ model are recovered. The growth rate decreases abruptly as the amount of overlap decreases below the internal deformation radius. However, unstable modes are also found for cases in which the two nonzero Πy regions are separated far apart. In these cases, the wavenumber of the unstable waves decreases such that the aspect ratio of the wave remains O(1). The waves are characterized by a large-scale barotropic component that has maximum amplitude near one boundary but extends all the way across the channel to the opposite boundary. Near the boundaries, the wave is of mixed barotropic–baroclinic structure with cross-front scales on the order of the internal deformation radius. The perturbation heat flux is concentrated near the nonzero Πy regions, but the perturbation momentum flux extends all the way across the channel. The perturbation fluxes act to reduce the isopycnal slopes near the channel boundaries and to transmit zonal momentum from the region of Πy 〉 0 to the region on the opposite side of the channel where Πy 〈 0. These nonzero perturbation momentum fluxes are found even for a mean state that has no lateral shear in the velocity field.
    Description: This work was supported by NSF Grants OPP-0421904, OCE-0423975 (MAS), and OCE- 85108600 (JP).
    Keywords: Baroclinic flows ; Barotropic flows
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  • 8
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 1999
    Description: A new, global inversion is used to estimate the large scale oceanic circulation based on the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and Java Australia Dynamic Experiment hydrographic data. A linear inverse "box" model is used to combine consistently the transoceanic sections. The circulation is geostrophic with an Ekman layer at the surface and oceanic layers defined by neutral surfaces. Near-conservation of mass, salt and top-to-bottom silica is required and, in addition, heat and the phosphate-oxygen combination (170[P04]+[02]) are conserved in layers that are not in contact with the surface. A globally-consistent solution is obtained for a depth-independent adjustment to the thermal wind field, freshwater flux divergenees, the Ekman transport, and the advective and diffusive dianeutral fluxes between layers. A detailed error budget permits calculation of statistical uncertainties, taking into account both the non-resolved part of the solution and the systematic errors due to the temporal oceanic variability. The estimated water mass transports during the WOCE period (1985-1996) are generally similar to previous published estimates. However, important differences are found. In particular, the inflow of bottom waters into the Pacific Ocean is smaller than in most previous estimates. Utilization of property anomaly conservation constraints allows the estimation of significant dianeutral diffusivities in deep layers, with a global average of 3 ± lcm2s- 1 north of 30°S. Dianeutral transfers indicate that about 20 Sv of bottom water is formed in the Southern Ocean. Significant ocean-atmosphere heat fluxes are found, with a global heating of 2.3 ± 0.4PW in the tropical band and a corresponding cooling at high latitudes. The signature of a large-scale average export production is found for nutrients in several temperate regions. Despite the large uncertainties, the production magnitudes are consistent with independent measurements from sediment traps and isotopic data. Net nutrient sources or sinks are found in several regions, suggesting either transport of dissolved organic matter or a seasonal alias. Oxygen indicates large exchanges with the atmosphere, with intake at high latitudes and outgassing/remineralization at low latitudes.
    Description: This work was supported in part by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CALTECH (contract #958125), and by gifts from Ford, General Motors, and Daimler-Chrysler to MIT's Climate Modelling Initiative.
    Keywords: Computer simulation ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents
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  • 9
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 March 1988
    Description: Inverse methods are applied to historical hydrographic data to address two aspects of the general circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. The method allows conservation statements for mass and other properties, along with a variety of other constraints, to be combined in a dynamically consistent way to estimate the absolute velocity field and associated property transports. The method is first used to examine the exchange of mass and heat between the South Atlantic and the neighboring ocean basins. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) carries a surplus of intermediate water into the South Atlantic through Drake Passage which is compensated by a surplus of deep and bottom water leaving the basin south of Africa. As a result, the ACC loses .25±.18x1015 W of heat in crossing the Atlantic. At 32°S the meridional flux of heat is .25±.19x1015 W equatorward, consistent in sign but smaller in magnitude than other recent estimates. This heat flux is carried primarily by a meridional overturning cell in which the export of 17 Sv of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) is balanced by an equatorward return flow equally split between the surface layers, and the intermediate and bottom water. No "leak" of warm Indian Ocean thermocline water is necessary to account for the equatorward heat flux across 32°S; in fact, a large transfer of warm water from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic is found to be inconsistent with the present data set. Together these results demonstrate that the Atlantic as a whole acts to convert intermediate water to deep and bottom water, and thus that the global thermohaline cell associated with the formation and export of NADW is closed primarily by a "cold water path," in which deep water leaving the Atlantic ultimately returns as intermediate water entering the basin through Drake Passage. The second problem addressed concerns the circulation and property fluxes across 24°and 36°N in the subtropical North Atlantic. Conservation statements are considered for the nutrients as well as mass, and the nutrients are found to contribute significant information independent of temperature and salinity. Silicate is particularly effective in reducing the indeterminacy of circulation estimates based on mass conservation alone. In turn, the results demonstrate that accurate estimates of the chemical fluxes depend on relatively detailed knowledge of the circulation. The zonal-integral of the circulation consists of an overturning cell at both latitudes, with a net export of 19 Sv of NADW. This cell results in a poleward heat flux of 1.3±.2x1015 Wand an equatorward oxygen flux of 2900±180 kmol S-l across each latitude. The net flux of silicate is also equatorward: 138±38 kmol s-1 and 152±56 kmol s -1 across 36°and 24° N, respectively. However, in contrast to heat and oxygen, the overturning cell is not the only important mechanism responsible for the net silicate transport. A horizontal recirculation consisting of northward flow of silica-rich deep water in the eastern basin balanced by southward flow of low silica water in the western basin results in a significant silicate flux to the north. The net equatorward flux is thus smaller than indicated by the overturning cell alone. The net flux of nitrate across 36°N is n9±35 kmol 8- 1 to the north and is indistinguishable from zero at 24°N (-8±39 kmol 8-1 ), leading to a net divergence of nitrate between these two latitudes. Forcing the system to conserve nitrate leads to an unreasonable circulation. The dominant contribution to the nitrate flux at 36°N results from the correlation of strong northward flow and relatively high nitrate concentrations in the sub-surface waters of the Gulf Stream. The observed nitrate divergence between 24°and 36°N, and convergence north of 36°N, can be accounted for by a shallow cell in which the northward flow of inorganic nitrogen (nitrate) in the Gulf Stream is balanced by a southward flux of dissolved organic nitrogen in the recirculation gyre. Oxidation of the dissolved organic matter during its transit of the subtropical gyre supplies the required source of regenerated nitrate to the Gulf Stream and consumes oxygen, consistent with recent observations of oxygen utilization in the Sargasso Sea.
    Description: This research was supported by NASA under contract NAG5-534 and NSF under contract OCE-8521685.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean temperature ; Conrad (Ship) Cruise ; Atlantis II (Ship : 1963-) Cruise AII109
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  • 10
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1998
    Description: A freshwater plume often forms when a river or an estuary discharges water onto the continental shelf. Freshwater plumes are ubiquitous features of the coastal ocean and usually leave a striking signature in the coastal hydrography. The present study combines both hydrographic data and idealized numerical simulations to examine how ambient currents and winds influence the transport and mixing of plume waters. The first portion of the thesis considers the alongshore transport of freshwater using idealized numerical simulations. In the absence of any ambient current, the downstream coastal current only carries a fraction of the discharged fresh water; the remaining fraction recirculates in a continually growing "bulge" of fresh water in the vicinity of the river mouth. The fraction of fresh water transported in the coastal current is dependent on the source conditions at the river mouth. The presence of an ambient current augments the transport in the plume so that its freshwater transport matches the freshwater source. For any ambient current in the same direction as the geostrophic coastal current, the plume will evolve to a steady-state width. A key result is that an external forcing agent is required in order for the entire freshwater volume discharged by a river to be transported as a coastal current. The next section of the thesis addresses the wind-induced advection of a river plume, using hydrographic data collected in the western Gulf of Maine. The observations suggest that the plume's cross-shore structure varies markedly as a function of fluctuations in alongshore wind forcing. Consistent with Ekman dynamics, upwelling favorable winds spread the plume offshore, at times widening it to over 50 km in offshore extent, while downwelling favorable winds narrow the plume width to a few Rossby radii. Near-surface current meters show significant correlations between cross-shore currents and alongshore wind stress, consistent with Ekman theory. Estimates of the terms in the alongshore momentum equation calculated from moored current meter arrays also indicate an approximate Ekman balance within the plume. A significant correlation between alongshore currents and alongshore wind stress suggests that interfacial drag may be important. The final section of the thesis is an investigation of the advection and mixing of a surface-trapped river plume in the presence of an upwelling favorable wind stress, using a three-dimensional model in a simple, rectangular domain. Model simulations demonstrate that the plume thins and is advected offshore by the crossshore Ekman transport. The thinned plume is susceptible to significant mixing due to the vertically sheared horizontal currents. The first order plume response is explained by Ekman dynamics and a Richardson number mixing criterion. Under a sustained wind event, the plume evolves to a quasi-steady, uniform thickness. The rate of mixing slowly decreases for longer times as the stratification in the plume weakens, but mixing persists under a sustained upwelling wind until the plume is destroyed. Mixing is most intense at the seaward plume front due to an Ekman straining mechanism in which the advection of cross-shore salinity gradients balances vertical mixing. The mean mixing rate observed in the plume is consistent with the mixing power law suggested by previous studies of I-D mixing, in spite of the two-dimensional dynamics driving the mixing in the plume.
    Description: This research was funded by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, and Gulf of Maine Regional Marine Research Program grants UM-S227 and UM-S276.
    Keywords: Oceanic mixing ; Hydrography ; Ocean circulation
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  • 11
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2011
    Description: Eastern oceanic boundary currents are subject to hydrodynamic instability, generate small scale features that are visible in satellite images and may radiate westward into the interior, where they can be modified by the large-scale circulations. This thesis studies the stability of an eastern boundary current with and without the large-scale flow influence in an idealized framework represented by barotropic quasi-geostrophic dynamics. The linear stability analysis of a meridional current with a continuous velocity profile shows that meridional eastern and western boundary currents support a limited number of radiating modes with long meridional and zonal wavelengths and small growth rates. However, the linearly stable, long radiating modes of an eastern boundary current can become nonlinearly unstable by resonating with short trapped unstable modes. This phenomenon is clearly demonstrated in the weakly nonlinear simulations. Results suggest that linearly stable longwave modes deserve more attention when the radiating instability of a meridional boundary current is considered. A large-scale flow affects the short trapped unstable mode and long radiating mode through different mechanisms. The large-scale flow modifies the structure of the boundary current to stabilize or destabilize the unstable modes, leading to a meridionally localized maximum in the perturbation kinetic energy field. The shortwave mode is accelerated or decelerated by the meridional velocity adjustment of the large-scale flow to have an elongated or a squeezed meridional structure, which is confirmed both in a linear WKB analysis and in nonlinear simulations. The squeezed or elongated unstable mode detunes the nonlinear resonance with the longwave modes, which then become less energetic. These two modes show different meridional structures in kinetic energy field because of the different mechanisms. In spite of the model simplicity, these results can potentially explain the formation of the zonal jets observed in altimeter data, and indicate the influence of the large-scale wind-driven circulation on eastern boundary upwelling systems in the real ocean. Studies with more realistic configurations remain future challenges.
    Keywords: Meridional overturning circulation ; Ocean circulation
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  • 12
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1999
    Description: This thesis studies the problems of generation and maintenance of recirculations by Gulf Stream instabilities. Observations show that the horizontal structure of the jet and its recirculations suffer significant changes in time. Here, the role of internal dynamics of the jet is isolated as one of the possible sources of such variability, and the differences between barotropic and baroclinic instabilities are investigated. The problem of recirculation development is considered in a framework of a free spin down of the 2-layer and the 1-layer, zonally symmetric, quasi-geostrophic jets. Linear stability analysis shows that in strongly baroclinic basic flows, eddies are capable of driving recirculations in the lower layer through the residual meridional circulation. In strongly barotropic jets, the linearly most unstable wave simply diffuses the jet. Nonlinear stability analysis indicates that recirculations are robust features of the 2-layer model. The strength of recirculations is a function of the model’s parameters. It increases with a decrease in the value of the nondimensional /3 due to potential vorticity homogenization constrained by enstrophy conservation. The recirculation strength is a non-monotonic function of the baroclinic velocity parameter; it is the strongest for strongly baroclinic basic flows, weakest for flows with intermediate baroclinic structure and of medium strength for strongly barotropic basic flows. Such non-monotonic behavior is the result of two different processes responsible for the recirculation development: linear eddy-mean flow interactions for strongly baroclinic basic flows and strongly nonlinear eddy-eddy and eddy-mean flow interaction for strongly barotropic flows. In the case of the reduced-gravity model, recirculations develop only for infinite deformation raduis. Basic flows with finite deformation radius are only weakly supercritical and therefore produced negligible recirculations after equilibration. The problem of maintenance of the recirculations is coupled to the questions of existence of low frequency variability and of multiple dynamical regimes of a system consisting of a quasi-geostrophic jet and its recirculations. The problem is studied in a framework of a 2-layer or a reduced-gravity colliding jets model which has no windforcing. Instead, it is forced by inflows and outflows through the open boundaries. Oniy the western boundary of the domain is closed, and a free slip boundary condition is used there. The results of the numerical experiments show that when oniy the mechanism of barotropic instability is present, the model has two energy states for a wide range of interfacial friction coefficients. The high energy state is characterized by well-developed recirculations and displays strong variability associated with either large recirculating gyres and a weak eddy field or small recirculations and a strong eddy field. The iow energy state is characterized by large meridional excursions in the separation point and large amplitude, westward propagating meanders that produce strong rings after interacting with the western wall. For physically relevant bottom friction values, the presence of baroclinic in stability in the recirculation regions of the 2-layer model allows for a unique dynamical regime characterized by well-developed recirculations in both layers. The low-frequency variability associated with the regime is weak and is related to meridional shifts in the position of the jet, to wrapping of the recirculations around each other, and to pulsations in their zonal extent. For strong bottom friction, the 2-layer model has only the mechanism of barotropic instability which reduces it to a 1 1/2-layer configuration; the model displays two dynamical regimes and strong low frequency variability in the upper layer, while the lower layer is strongly frictional.
    Description: Financial support for this research was provided by NSF grant number OCE 9617848.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents
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    Type: Thesis
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  • 13
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January 1999
    Description: Today, deep waters produced in the North Atlantic are exported through the western South Atlantic. Antarctic intermediate water AAJW also enters the Atlantic in this region. Circumpolar deep water (CDW) fills the depths below AAIW and above and below northern source waters. A depth transect of cores from 1567-3909 m water depth in the western South Atlantic are ideally located to monitor inter-ocean exchange of deep water, and variations in the relative strength of northern versus southern source water production. Last glacial maximum (LGM) Cd/Ca and δ13C data indicate a nutrient-depleted intermediate-depth water mass. In the mid-depth western South Atlantic, a simple conversion of LGM δ13C data suggests significantly less nutrient enrichment than LGM Cd/Ca ratios, but Cd/Ca and δ13C data can be reconciled when plotted in CdW/δ13C space. Paired LGM Cd/Ca and δ13C data from mid-depth cores suggest increasingly nutrient rich waters below 2000 m, but do not require an increase in Southern Ocean water contribution relative to today. Cd/Ca data suggest no glacial-interglacial change in the hydrography of the deepest waters ofthe region. To maintain relatively low Cd/Ca ratios low nutrients in the deepest western South Atlantic waters, and in CDW in general, during the LGM requires an increased supply ofnutrient-depleted glacial North Atlantic intermediate water (GNA1W) and/or nutrient-depleted glacial Subantarctic surface waters to CDW to balance reduced NADW contribution to CDW. LGM Cd/Ca and δ13C data suggest strong GNA1W influence in the western South Atlantic which in turn implies export of GNAIW from the Atlantic, and entrainment of GNA1W into the Antarctic Circumpolar current.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Oceanic mixing
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  • 14
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 28 (2011): 1539–1553, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00001.1.
    Description: Turbulent Reynolds stresses are now routinely estimated from acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements in estuaries and tidal channels using the variance method, yet biases due to surface gravity waves limit its use in the coastal ocean. Recent modifications to this method, including spatially filtering velocities to isolate the turbulence from wave velocities and fitting a cospectral model to the below-wave band cospectra, have been used to remove this bias. Individually, each modification performed well for the published test datasets, but a comparative analysis over the range of conditions in the coastal ocean has not yet been performed. This work uses ADCP velocity measurements from five previously published coastal ocean and estuarine datasets, which span a range of wave and current conditions as well as instrument configurations, to directly compare methods for estimating stresses in the presence of waves. The computed stresses from each were compared to bottom stress estimates from a quadratic drag law and, where available, estimates of wind stress. These comparisons, along with an analysis of the cospectra, indicated that spectral fitting performs well when the wave climate is wide-banded and/or multidirectional as well as when instrument noise is high. In contrast, spatial filtering performs better when waves are narrow-banded, low frequency, and when wave orbital velocities are strong relative to currents. However, as spatial filtering uses vertically separated velocity bins to remove the wave bias, spectral fitting is able to resolve stresses over a larger fraction of the water column.
    Description: J. Rosman acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation (OCE-1061108).
    Keywords: Coastal flows ; Momentum ; Ocean circulation ; Waves, oceanic ; In situ observations ; Instrumentation/sensors
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  • 15
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2012
    Description: Observations from a three-year field program on the inner shelf south of Martha's Vineyard, MA and a numerical model are used to describe the effect of stratification on inner shelf circulation, transport, and sediment resuspension height. Thermal stratification above the bottom mixed layer is shown to cap the height to which sediment is resuspended. Stratification increases the transport driven by cross-shelf wind stresses, and this effect is larger in the response to offshore winds than onshore winds. However, a one-dimensional view of the dynamics is not sufficient to explain the relationship between circulation and stratification. An idealized, cross-shelf transect in a numerical model (ROMS) is used to isolate the effects of stratification, wind stress magnitude, surface heat flux, cross-shelf density gradient, and wind direction on the inner shelf response to the cross-shelf component of the wind stress. In well mixed and weakly stratified conditions, the cross-shelf density gradient can be used to predict the transport efficiency of the cross-shelf wind stress. In stratified conditions, the presence of an along-shelf wind stress component makes the inner shelf response to cross-shelf wind stress strongly asymmetric.
    Description: This work was supported through National Science Foundation grant no. OCE-0548961, the WHOI Academic Programs Office, and the WHOI Coastal Ocean Institute.
    Keywords: Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Ocean circulation
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  • 16
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2012
    Description: Interactions between the ocean circulation in sub-ice shelf cavities and the overlying ice shelf have received considerable attention in the context of observed changes in flow speeds of marine ice sheets around Antarctica. Modeling these interactions requires parameterizing the turbulent boundary layer processes to infer melt rates from the oceanic state at the ice-ocean interface. Here we explore two such parameterizations in the context of the MIT ocean general circulation model coupled to the z-coordinates ice shelf cavity model of Losch (2008). We investigate both idealized ice shelf cavity geometries as well as a realistic cavity under Pine Island Ice Shelf (PIIS), West Antarctica. Our starting point is a three-equation melt rate parameterization implemented by Losch (2008), which is based on the work of Hellmer and Olbers (1989). In this form, the transfer coefficients for calculating heat and freshwater fluxes are independent of frictional turbulence induced by the proximity of the moving ocean to the fixed ice interface. More recently, Holland and Jenkins (1999) have proposed a parameterization in which the transfer coefficients do depend on the ocean-induced turbulence and are directly coupled to the speed of currents in the ocean mixed layer underneath the ice shelf through a quadratic drag formulation and a bulk drag coefficient. The melt rate parameterization in the MITgcm is augmented to account for this velocity dependence. First, the effect of the augmented formulation is investigated in terms of its impact on melt rates as well as on its feedback on the wider sub-ice shelf circulation. We find that, over a wide range of drag coefficients, velocity-dependent melt rates are more strongly constrained by the distribution of mixed layer currents than by the temperature gradient between the shelf base and underlying ocean, as opposed to velocity-independent melt rates. This leads to large differences in melt rate patterns under PIIS when including versus not including the velocity dependence. In a second time, the modulating effects of tidal currents on melting at the base of PIIS are examined. We find that the temporal variability of velocity-dependent melt rates under tidal forcing is greater than that of velocity-independent melt rates. Our experiments suggest that because tidal currents under PIIS are weak and buoyancy fluxes are strong, tidal mixing is negligible and tidal rectification is restricted to very steep bathymetric features, such as the ice shelf front. Nonetheless, strong tidally-rectified currents at the ice shelf front significantly increase ablation rates there when the formulation of the transfer coefficients includes the velocity dependence. The enhanced melting then feedbacks positively on the rectified currents, which are susceptible to insulate the cavity interior from changes in open ocean conditions.
    Description: National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 1996
    Description: This thesis addresses the question of how a highly energetic eddy field could be generated in the interior of the ocean away from the swift boundary currents. The energy radiation due to the temporal growth of non-trapped (radiating) disturbances in such a boundary current is thought to be one of the main sources for the described variability. The problem of stability of an energetic current, such as the Gulf Stream, is formulated. The study then focuses on the ability of the current to support radiating instabilities capable of significant penetration into the far-field and their development with time. The conventional model of the Gulf Stream as a zonal current is extended to allow the jet axis to make an angle to a latitude circle. The linear stability of such a nonzonal flow, uniform in the along-jet direction on a beta-plane, is first studied. The stability computations are performed for piece-wise constant and continuous velocity profiles. New stability properties of nonzonal jets are discussed. In particular, the destabilizing effect of the meridional tilt of the jet axis is demonstrated. The radiating properties of nonzonal currents are found to be very different from those of zonal currents. In particular, purely zonal flows do not support radiating instabilities, whereas flows with a meridional component are capable of radiating long and slowly growing waves. The nonlinear terms are then included in the consideration and the effects of the nonlinear interactions on the radiating properties of the solution are studied in detail. For these purposes, the efficient numerical code for solving equation for the QG potential vorticity with open boundary conditions of Orlanski's type is constructed. The results show that even fast growing linear solutions, which are trapped during the linear stage of developement, can radiate energy in the nonlinear regime if the basic current is nonzonal. The radiation starts as soon as the initial fast exponential growth significantly slows. The initial trapping of those solutions is caused by their fast temporal growth. The new mechanism for radiation is related to the nonzonality of a current.
    Description: This work was supported by NSF Grant OCE 9301845.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Ocean circulation ; Rossby waves ; Turbulence ; Eddies ; Electric conductivity
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2013
    Description: Studying oceanic eddies is important for understanding and predicting ocean circulation and climate variability. The central focus of this dissertation is the energy exchange between eddies and mean flow and banded structures in the low-frequency component of the eddy field. A combination of a realistic eddy-permitting ocean state estimate and simplified theoretical models is used to address the following specific questions. (1) What are the major spatial characteristics of eddy-mean flow interaction from an energy perspective? Is eddy-mean flow interaction a local process in most ocean regions? (2) The banded structures in the low-frequency eddy field are termed striations. How much oceanic variability is associated with striations? How does the time-mean circulation, for example a subtropical gyre or constant mean flow, influence the origin and characteristics of striations? How much do striations contribute to the energy budget and tracer mixing?
    Description: This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration contracts NNX09AI87G and NNX08AR33G.
    Keywords: Eddies ; Ocean circulation
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  • 19
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 2234–2253, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-033.1.
    Description: Meridional velocity, mass, and heat transport in the equatorial oceans are difficult to estimate because of the nonapplicability of the geostrophic balance. For this purpose a steady-state model is utilized in the equatorial Indian Ocean using NCEP wind stress and temperature and salinity data from the World Ocean Atlas 2005 (WOA05) and Argo. The results show a Somali Current flowing to the south during the winter monsoon carrying −11.5 ± 1.3 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) and −12.3 ± 0.3 Sv from WOA05 and Argo, respectively. In the summer monsoon the Somali Current reverses to the north transporting 16.8 ± 1.2 Sv and 19.8 ± 0.6 Sv in the WOA05 and Argo results. Transitional periods are considered together and in consequence, there is not a clear Somali Current present in this period. Model results fit with in situ measurements made around the region, although Argo data results are quite more realistic than WOA05 data results.
    Description: This study has been partly funded by the MOC Project (CTM 2008- 06438) and the Spanish contribution to the Argo network (AC2009 ACI2009-0998), financed by the Spanish Government and Feder.
    Description: 2013-06-01
    Keywords: Indian Ocean ; Subtropics ; Currents ; Ocean circulation ; Transport ; Wind stress
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  • 20
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2013
    Description: Between 2002 and 2011 a single mooring was maintained in the core of the Pacific Water boundary current in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea near 152° W. Using velocity and hydrographic data from six year-long deployments during this time period, we examine the interannual variability of the current. It is found that the volume, heat, and freshwater transport have all decreased drastically over the decade, by more than 80%. The most striking changes have occurred during the summer months. Using a combination of weather station data, atmospheric reanalysis fields, and concurrent shipboard and mooring data from the Chukchi Sea, we investigate the physical drivers responsible for these changes. It is demonstrated that an increase in summertime easterly winds along the Beaufort slope is the primary reason for the drop in transport. The intensification of the local winds has in turn been driven by a strengthening of the summer Beaufort High in conjunction with a deepening of the summer Aleutian Low. Since the fluxes of mass, heat, and freshwater through Bering Strait have increased over the same time period, this raises the question as to the fate of the Pacific water during recent years and its impacts. We present evidence that more heat has been fluxed directly into the interior basin from Barrow Canyon rather than entering the Beaufort shelfbreak jet, and this is responsible for a significant portion of the increased ice melt in the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean.
    Description: The majority of the data for this project was funded by grant # ARC-0856244 from the O ce of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation. My time at WHOI was funded by the United States Navy, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the WHOI Academic Programs O ffice.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean-atmosphere interaction
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  • 21
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2014
    Description: This thesis explores the buoyancy-driven circulation in the Red Sea, using a combination of observations, as well as numerical modeling and analytical method. The first part of the thesis investigates the formation mechanism and spreading of Red Sea Overflow Water (RSOW) in the Red Sea. The preconditions required for open-ocean convection, which is suggested to be the formation mechanism of RSOW, are examined. The RSOW is identified and tracked as a layer with minimum potential vorticity and maximum chlorofluorocarbon-12. The pathway of the RSOW is also explored using numerical simulation. If diffusivity is not considered, the production rate of the RSOW is estimated to be 0.63 Sv using Walin’s method. By comparing this 0.63 Sv to the actual RSOW transport at the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, it is implied that the vertical diffusivity is about 3.4 x 10-5m2 s-1 . The second part of the thesis studies buoyancy-forced circulation in an idealized Red Sea. Buoyancy-loss driven circulation in marginal seas is usually dominated by cyclonic boundary currents on f-plane, as suggested by previous observations and numerical modeling. This thesis suggests that by including β-effect and buoyancy loss that increases linearly with latitude, the resultant mean Red Sea circulation consists of an anticyclonic gyre in the south and a cyclonic gyre in the north. In mid-basin, the northward surface flow crosses from the western boundary to the eastern boundary. The observational support is also reviewed. The mechanism that controls the crossover of boundary currents is further explored using an ad hoc analytical model based on PV dynamics. This ad hoc analytical model successfully predicts the crossover latitude of boundary currents. It suggests that the competition between advection of planetary vorticity and buoyancy-loss related term determines the crossover latitude. The third part of the thesis investigates three mechanisms that might account for eddy generation in the Red Sea, by conducting a series of numerical experiments. The three mechanisms are: i) baroclinic instability; ii) meridional structure of surface buoyancy losses; iii) cross-basin wind fields.
    Description: This work is supported by Award Nos. USA 00002, KSA 00011 and KSA 00011/02 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) , National Science Foundation OCE0927017, and WHOI Academic Program Office.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents ; Aegaeo (Ship) Cruise
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  • 22
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 28 (2015): 8574–8584, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00809.1.
    Description: The subsurface ocean response to anthropogenic climate forcing remains poorly characterized. From the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), a robust response of the lower thermocline is identified, where the warming is considerably weaker in the subtropics than in the tropics and high latitudes. The lower thermocline change is inversely proportional to the thermocline depth in the present climatology. Ocean general circulation model (OGCM) experiments show that sea surface warming is the dominant forcing for the subtropical gyre change in contrast to natural variability for which wind dominates, and the ocean response is insensitive to the spatial pattern of surface warming. An analysis based on a ventilated thermocline model shows that the pattern of the lower thermocline change can be interpreted in terms of the dynamic response to the strengthened stratification and downward heat mixing. Consequently, the subtropical gyres become intensified at the surface but weakened in the lower thermcline, consistent with results from CMIP experiments.
    Description: The work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB955600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41125019, 41206021), and the U.S. National Science Foundation (AGS 1249145, 1305719).
    Description: 2016-05-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Physical Meteorology and Climatology ; Climate change
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  • 23
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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: The daily heating of the ocean by the sun can create a stably stratified near-surface layer when the winds are slight and solar insolation is strong. This type of shallow stable layer is called a Diurnal Warm Layer (DWL). This thesis examines the physics and dynamics of DWLs from observations of the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean associated with the Salinity Processes in the Upper ocean Regional Study (SPURS-I). Momentum transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean through wind stress becomes trapped within the DWL, generating shear across the layer. During SPURS-I, strong diurnal shear across the DWL was coincident with enhanced turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation (𝜖, 𝜖 〉 10−5 W/kg) observed from glider microstructure profiles of the near-surface. However, a scale analysis demonstrated that surface forcing, including diurnal shear, could not be the sole mechanism for the enhanced TKE dissipation. High-frequency internal waves (𝜔 ≫ 𝑓) were observed in the upper ocean during the daytime within the DWL. Internal waves are able to transfer energy from the deep ocean into the DWL through the unstratified remnant mixed layer, which is the intervening layer between the DWL and seasonal thermocline. As the strength of the stratification of the DWL increases, so does the shear caused by the tunneling internal waves. The analysis demonstrates that internal waves can generate strong enough shear to cause a shear-induced instability, and are a plausible source of the observed enhanced TKE dissipation. Vertically-varying horizontal transport across the upper ocean occurs because a diurnal current exists within the DWL, but not in the unstratified remnant mixed layer below. Therefore, when a DWL is present, the water within DWL is horizontally transported a different distance than the water below. Coupled with nocturnal convection that mixes the DWL with the unstratified layer at night, this cycle is a mechanism for submesoscale (1-10 km) lateral diffusion across the upper ocean. Estimates of a horizontal diffusion coefficient are similar in magnitude to current estimates of submesoscale diffusion based on observations, and are likely an important source of horizontal diffusion in the upper ocean.
    Description: Supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCE-1129646. The collection and analysis of data from the SPURS-I central mooring were supported under National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Grant No. NNX11AE84G and NNX14AH38G.
    Keywords: SPURS: Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean waves ; Ocean currents ; Diffusion ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN209 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN522
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  • 24
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 2127-2140, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0035.1.
    Description: Shipboard hydrographic and velocity measurements collected in summer 2014 are used to study the evolution of the freshwater coastal current in southern Greenland as it encounters Cape Farewell. The velocity structure reveals that the coastal current maintains its identity as it flows around the cape and bifurcates such that most of the flow is diverted to the outer west Greenland shelf, while a small portion remains on the inner shelf. Taking into account this inner branch, the volume transport of the coastal current is conserved, but the freshwater transport decreases on the west side of Cape Farewell. A significant amount of freshwater appears to be transported off the shelf where the outer branch flows adjacent to the shelfbreak circulation. It is argued that the offshore transposition of the coastal current is caused by the flow following the isobaths as they bend offshore because of the widening of the shelf on the west side of Cape Farewell. An analysis of the potential vorticity shows that the subsequent seaward flux of freshwater can be enhanced by instabilities of the current. This set of circumstances provides a pathway for the freshest water originating from the Arctic, as well as runoff from the Greenland ice sheet, to be fluxed into the interior Labrador Sea where it could influence convection in the basin.
    Description: Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-1259618.
    Description: 2019-03-11
    Keywords: Boundary currents ; Coastal flows ; Instability ; Ocean circulation ; Potential vorticity ; Transport
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  • 25
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September, 1976
    Description: The temporal and spatial variability of low frequency moored temperature and velocity observations, obtained as part of the Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (MODE), are analyzed to study the kinematics and energetics of mesoscale eddies in the ocean. The temporal variability of the low frequency motions is characterized by three regimes: very low frequencies with periods greater than 200 days, an eddy energy containing band of 80 to 120 day periods, and high frequencies wìth periods less than 30 days. At very low frequencies, the zonal kinetic energy exceeds the meridional at all depths. In the thermocline, the very low frequency zonal flow dominates the total kinetic energy. The greatest contribution to the kinetic and potential energy in the MODE region, except for the thermocline zonal flow, is from an eddy energy containing band of 80 to 120 day periods. Eddy scale kinetic energy spatial variations are confined to this band. At high frequencies, the kinetic and potential energy scale with frequency as ω-2.5 and with depth in the WKB sense. Energy at high frequencies is partitioned evenly between zonal kinetic, meridional kinetic and potential energy and is homogeneous over 100 km. Using the technique of empirical orthogonal expansion, the vertical structure of the energetically dominant eddies is described by a few modes. The displacement is dominated by a mode with a thermocline maximum and in phase displacements with depth, while the kinetic energy is dominated by an equivalent barotropic mode. A smaller portion of the kinetic and potential energy is associated with out of phase thermocline and deep water currents and displacements. The dynamics of the mesoscale eddies are very nonlinear. Using the vertical veering of the current at MODE Center, the estimated horizontal advection of heat contributes significantly to the low frequency thermal balance. The observed very low frequency anisotropic flow is consistent with the nonlinear eddy spindown models, dominated by cascades of vorticity and energy. At high frequencies, the spectral similarity is consistent with advected geostrophic turbulence.
    Description: The National Science Foundation supported the work through grants GX29034 and IDO-75-03998 and a graduate fellowship.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean temperature
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    Type: Thesis
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 August, 1978
    Description: A two-layer linear analytic model is used to study the response of the mid-latitude ocean to the seasonal variation of the windstress. The most important component of the response is a barotropic quasi-steady Sverdrup balance. A meridional ridge such as the Antilles Arc is modeled as an infinitely thin meridional barrier that blocks the lower layer but does not protrude into the upper layer. It is found that such a barrier has little effect on the upper layer flow across the barrier. This result is obtained provided the frequency of the motion is low enough so that free short Rossby waves are essentially nondivergent. In this case there is little coupling between the layers for energy propagating to the east away from the barrier. A study of the dynamics of flow over a sloping bottom is made and the results are used to determine the effect on seasonal oscillations of eastern boundary slopes and triangular ridges. It is found that the presence of a slope at the eastern boundary has little effect. A meridional ridge that does not reach the interface may cause substantial scattering of free Rossby waves, but unless the ridge is steep its effect on the quasi-steady Sverdrup balance is minimal. However, if the ridge height is a substantial fraction of the lower layer depth and the width is comparable to the scale of free short Rossby waves, the ridge will tend to block flow in the lower layer, acting like the infinitely thin barrier. The theory suggests that the Antilles Arc should have the effect of a thin barrier, while the Mid-Atlantic Ridge should have little effect on the response of the ocean to seasonal wind variations.
    Description: For three and a half years of generous financial support I am grateful to the John and Fannie Hertz Foundation, from which I received a Graduate Fellowship. Research money and other support were provided by the National Science Foundation under contract OCE 77 15600.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents ; Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Ocean waves
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  • 27
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Physical Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2006
    Description: A modern general circulation model of the Southern Ocean with one-sixth of a degree resolution is optimized to the observed ocean in a weighted least squares sense. Convergence toward the state estimate solution is carried out by systematically adjusting the control variables (prescribed atmospheric state, initial conditions, and open northern boundary at 24.7°S) using the adjoint method. A cost function compares the model state to data from CTD synoptic sections, hydrographic climatology, satellite altimetry, and XBTs. Costs attributed to control variable perturbations ensure a physically realistic solution. An optimized solution is determined by the weights placed on the cost function terms. The state estimation procedure, along with the weights used, is described. A significant result is that the adjoint method is shown to work at eddy-permitting resolution in the highly-energetic Southern Ocean. At the time of the writing of this thesis the state estimate was not fully consistent with the observations. An analysis of the remaining misfit, as well as the mass transport in the preliminary state, is presented.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation
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  • 28
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August, 1977
    Description: Stimulated by new evidence from both "in situ" oceanic observations and results from numerical modelling, a laboratory study of quasigeostrophic flow and turbulence in a rotating homogeneous fluid has been undertaken. Two dimensional turbulence driven by a uniform distribution of sources and sinks which oscillate in time, can be fairly well reproduced in this context. Inertial time scales are about ten times smaller than Ekman spinup time, and typical Reynolds numbers read 2000. The observations emphasize the spectral tendency of the energy containing eddies. The case of no topography is first discussed. In steadily forced turbulence, it is observed that the energy containing scale is significantly larger than the forcing scale. In the decaying stage the red cascade is observed and rates of interaction are measured. Theoretical arguments for both behaviors are presented; the former concerning the forced turbulence case is believed to be new. The forcing is next applied over various large scale topographies, modelling the geophysical beta effect. The polar beta plane geometry preserves the above spectral characteristics but at the same time introduces anisotropy into the flow pattern. A broad westward mean flow develops in the north and is surrounded by a belt of cyclones lying on its southward side. The calculated second-order Eulerian mean flows induced by steadily and uniformly forced Rossby waves in a long zonal channel, exhibit much of the same momentum distribution in the inertial regime. In contrast, the "sliced cylinder" geometry which possesses no closed geostrophic contours drastically modifies the above picture. Both mean flow production and a large scale tendency for the eddies are inhibited. The geographical distribution of the eddy intensities and scales is now wildly inhomogeneous. The second aspect of this work is a study of the interaction of Rossby waves with mean flows. A zonally traveling, forced wave is generated near the southern boundary of a polar beta plane. Due to energy radiation in the free interior and (or) potential vorticity mixing by the finite amplitude waves, a westward zonal flow develops. The effect of the mean flow upon the forced steady waves is to weaken the anticyclones and intensify the cyclones. Pressure time series reveal a growth of harmonics and general spectral broadening as the waves travel freely inwards, suggesting active nonlinear interactions. An experimental test of Rhines' (1977) potential vorticity mixing theory is also presented at free latitudes. The decay period when the driving is suppressed shows that a net transfer from the waves to the mean flow kinetic energy occurs. Connection with hydrodynamic stability theory is discussed. Interaction of Rossby waves with an externally generated westward mean flow allows one to make a controlled study of the critical layer problem. For small amplitude waves, the mean flow is accelerated in the entire region between the forcing and the critical latitude which acts as a wall for mean wave momentum. In nonlinear runs the steady profile of the westward flow indicates that an accelerating force is acting everywhere, revealing the increasing transmission of wave momentum through the critical layer. At the same time, pressure measurements near the critical point show considerable fine structure developing over a long time scale. The third part deals with steady isolated source-sink flows in the sliced cylinder geometry. The response of the fluid to a meridionally oriented steady dipole extends exclusively westward of the forcing. The viscously balanced solutions are discussed and relevance to oceanic abyssal circulation is emphasized. With strong driving, the combination of a cyclone to the north and an anticyclone to the south is absolutely stable although the reverse configuration is not. A connection with a certain class of free, steady, isolated, inertial solutions developed recently by Stern (1976) is made.
    Description: The DGRST . (FRACE) and the Joint Program in Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offered a fellowship for the first two years. The National Science Foundation under Grant OCE75-2l 674 and the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-74-C0262-NR-083-004 supported this study for the final two years.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Turbulence ; Rotating masses of fluid ; Rossby waves
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  • 29
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2006
    Description: The oceanic response to overflows is explored using a two-layer isopycnal model. Overflows are a major source of the dense water of the global deep ocean, originating from only a few marginal seas. They enter the open ocean as dense gravity currents down a continental slope and play a crucial role in the deep ocean circulation. To understand the dynamics of these overflows, previous studies simplified their dynamics by treating the overlying ocean as inactive. This simplification may be a first approximation for the overflow but not for the overlying ocean. The Mediterranean overflow, for example, entrains about 2 Sv of overlying Atlantic water when it enters the Atlantic through Gibraltar Strait. The upper ocean must balance the mass loss and vortex stretching associated with entrainment. Thus for the upper ocean, overflows represent a localized region of intense mass and PV forcing. The simulations in this study show that in the upper layer, entrainment forces a cyclonic circulation along bathymetric contours. This is a topographic β-plume and its transport depends on the entrainment region size and the topographic slope. Baroclinic instability also develops and creates eddy thickness flux to the in-shore direction, forcing a double gyre topographic β-plume near the strait due to eddy PV flux convergence on the in-shore side of the continental slope and divergence on the offshore side. When the upper oceanic response to overflows is examined specifically for the Mediterranean overflow, the upper ocean is found to establish two trans-Atlantic zonal jets, analogous to the Azores current and the Azores Counter current. These two zonal jets are an extension of the topographic β-plume driven by the overflow. Because the eddies in the steep slope region near Cape St. Vincent drive a mean flow across the slope, the topographic β-plume connects to the Atlantic Ocean to become a basin scale flow. This thesis shows that overflows can induce a significant circulation in the upper ocean, and for the Mediterranean overflow, this circulation is a basin scale flow.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE-0424741.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Computer simulation
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  • 30
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 August 1980
    Description: Observational evidence of seasonal variability below the main thermocline in the eastern North Atlantic is described, and a theoretical model of oceanic response to seasonally varying windstress forcing is constructed to assist in the interpretation of the observations. The observations are historical conductivity-temperature-depth data from the Bay of Biscay region (2° to 20°W, 42° to 52°N), a series of eleven cruises over the three years 1972 through 1974, spaced approximately three months apart. The analysis of the observations utilizes a new technique for identifying the adiabatically leveled density field corresponding to the observed density field. The distribution of salinity anomaly along the leveled surfaces is examined, as are the vertical displacements of observed density surfaces from the leveled reference surfaces, and the available potential energy. Seasonal variations in salinity anomaly and vertical displacement occur as westward propagating disturbances with zonal wavelength 390 (±50) km, phase 71 (±30) days from 1 January, and maximum amplitudes of ±30 ppm and ±20 db respectively. The leveled density field varies seasonally with an amplitude corresponding to a thermocline displacement of ±15 db. The observations are consistent with the predictions of a model in which an ocean of variable stratification with a surface mixed layer and an eastern boundary is forced by seasonal changes in a sinusoidal windstress pattern, when windstress parameters calculated from the observations of Bunker and Worthington (1976) are applied.
    Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014~76-C-197, NR 083-400.
    Keywords: Oceanography ; Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Ocean circulation ; Energy budget (Geophysics)
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  • 31
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1982
    Description: Mean long-isobath drift of the order 5 cm/sec has been observed on several continental shelves, e.g. in the Middle Atlantic Bight and in the Weddell Sea. A theoretical model is developed to explore the driving mechanism of this mean circulation. In the model, the velocity field is decomposed into a depth-independent bottom geostrophic component and a thermohaline component relative to the bottom. The latter can be calculated from the density field, and the former is described by a parabolic equation which expresses the tendency-to balance vorticity between bottom stress curl and vortex stretching. The near-bottom flow field is studied both analytically and numerically under forcing by wind, deep ocean flow, and long-isobath density differences. Model solutions are derived for circulations over a shelf/slope topography driven by wind stress, wind stress curl, and deep ocean currents. The resulting flow patterns show strong dependence on the topography. Over the continental slope, large bottom depth variation suppresses the flow driven by local forcing and insulates the slope region from circulations on the shelf and in the deep-ocean. Geochemical observations on the continental shelf and slope support the argument that the flow on the upper slope below the thermocline is weak. Under the condition of a vertically homogeneous layer below the thermocline, near-bottom density advection is mainly caused by the bottom geostrophic velocity field. Using the parabolic vorticity equation together with a density equation, circulations driven by coastal buoyancy flux and surface cooling are investigated. In the mid-shelf region, away from the coast and the shelf break, the density field is governed by Burgers' equation, which shows longshore self-advection of density perturbations and the formation of front with strong density gradient in the longshore direction. A dense water blob moves in the direction of Kelvin wave propagation. The direction is reversed for the movement of a light water blob. In the near-shore region, the light river water bottom is also self-advected in the direction of Kelvin wave propagation. For a heavy density anomaly at the coast, the initial movement is offshore, and the accumulation of dense water in the mid-shelf region leads to long-isobath propagation of density perturbations, similar to the case of a dense water blob. This theory sheds light on the bottom water movements in the Adriatic Sea, the Antarctic Continent, and the Middle Atlantic Bight. The model solutions are applied to the flow on the western North Atlantic shelf. Southwestward flow is produced near the coast by the self-advection of river water in winter and spring. The southwestward long-isobath propagation of thermal fronts caused by winter cooling contributes significantly to the mean circulation over the mid-shelf. It is suggested that density-driven current is an important component of the near-bottom mean circulation in the Middle Atlantic Bight in spring and summer.
    Description: This work was supported by the Department of Energy through contract entitled Coastal-Shelf Transport and Diffusion.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents ; Continental shelf
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  • 32
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1981
    Description: The equatorial Pacific heat flow low, a major oceanic geothermal anomaly centered on the equatorial sediment bulge, was investigated using deeply penetrating heat flow probes (6-11 meters penetration) within three detailed surveys (400 km2) and along over 10,000 km of continuous seismic profiles (CSP). Previous heat flow measurements in this region defined a broad region characterized by a heat flux well below 1 HFU. We report 98 new measurements collected during cruises PLEIADES 3 and KNORR 73-4 that verify the anomalous nature of the heat flux and also define non-linear temperature gradients (concave down). Temperature field disturbances due to perturbations of a purely conductive heat transport regime are incapable of suitably explaining either of these observations . A simple model incorporating heat transport by both conduction and fluid convection through the sediments fits the observations. A volume flux of (hydrothermal) fluid in the range of 10-6 to 10-5 cm3/sec/cm2 (0.1 liter/yr/cm2) is required. The sense of the flow for all measurements exhibiting non-linear gradients is upward out of the sediment column; no evidence for the recharging of the system was observed. Investigation of a well-defined boundary of the low zone at 4°N and 114°W showed a transition from low and variable heat flow to values compatible with thermal models that correlated with a change in the nature of the basement from rough to smooth. A few outcrops occur in the area of rough basement, but otherwise the region is well-sedimented (greater than 200 meters). Measurements within a detailed survey centered at this transition showed a dramatic increase in heat flow from 1.21 HFU to values greater than 3 HFU over a horizontal distance of 10km. A similar transition from non-linear to linear temperature gradients was not observed as nearly every measurement was non-linear. Heat flow measurements located in well-sedimented, outcrop-free areas (A environments) were associated with linear gradients and a heat flux greater than 1 HFU, however, several of these values were well below the theoretical heat flow for the appropriate age crust. Values measured in environments other than A exhibited variable heat flow and non-linear gradients. The average value of measurements located in A environments within the equatorial Pacific heat flow low was 1.37±0.27 HFU. The previously reported average was 0.92±0.48 HFU based on several measurements from L-DGO cruise VEMA 24-3. The average heat flow measured at a survey located outside the low heat flow zone on crust of 55 ±5 m.a. was 1.76 ±0.30 HFU which is in good agreement with the theoretical value of 1.60. The measurements in this survey were not located in A environments suggesting that crustal convection has ceased or is greatly attenuated within crust of this age. Error analysis of the geothermal data reduction using the convective/conductive heat transport model suggests that the volume flux parameter is sensitive to temperature measurement errors greater than a few millidegrees. Volume fluxes less than 10-7 cm/sec are difficult to distinguish from the purely conductive case assuming instrumental accuracies of 0.001°C. Resolution of the volume flux deteriorates as heat flow decreases and is poor for values less than 0.5 HFU. A detailed survey located within the low zone confirmed previous measurements of low heat flow, however, due to the low value of heat flow (about 0.5 HFU) the small-scale variability could not be clearly defined.
    Keywords: Geothermal resources ; Heat budget ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean bottom ; Marine geophysics ; Pleides (Ship) Cruise 3 ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN73-4
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  • 33
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. 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 39 (2009): 107-124, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3952.1.
    Description: In most estuarine systems it is assumed that the dominant along-channel momentum balance is between the integrated pressure gradient and bed stress. Scaling the amplitude of the estuarine circulation based on this balance has been shown to have predictive skill. However, a number of authors recently highlighted important nonlinear processes that contribute to the subtidal dynamics at leading order. In this study, a previously validated numerical model of the Hudson River estuary is used to examine the forces driving the residual estuarine circulation and to test the predictive skill of two linear scaling relationships. Results demonstrate that the nonlinear advective acceleration terms contribute to the subtidal along-channel momentum balance at leading order. The contribution of these nonlinear terms is driven largely by secondary lateral flows. Under a range of forcing conditions in the model runs, the advective acceleration terms nearly always act in concert with the baroclinic pressure gradient, reinforcing the residual circulation. Despite the strong contribution of the nonlinear advective terms to the subtidal dynamical balance, a linear scaling accurately predicts the strength of the observed residual circulation in the model. However, this result is largely fortuitous, as this scaling does not account for two processes that are fundamental to the estuarine circulation. The skill of this scaling results because of the compensatory relationship between the contribution of the advective acceleration terms and the suppression of turbulence due to density stratification. Both of these processes, neither of which is accounted for in the linear scaling, increase the residual estuarine circulation but have an opposite dependence on tidal amplitude and, consequently, strength of stratification.
    Description: This research was supported by the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries—Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral fellowship program, as well as NSF Grants OCE-0452054 and OCE-0451740.
    Keywords: Advection ; Estuarine circulation ; Friction ; Density currents ; Baroclinic flows
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  • 34
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 380-399, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3728.1.
    Description: Barotropic to baroclinic conversion and attendant phenomena were recently examined at the Kaena Ridge as an aspect of the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Experiment. Two distinct mixing processes appear to be at work in the waters above the 1100-m-deep ridge crest. At middepths, above 400 m, mixing events resemble their open-ocean counterparts. There is no apparent modulation of mixing rates with the fortnightly cycle, and they are well modeled by standard open-ocean parameterizations. Nearer to the topography, there is quasi-deterministic breaking associated with each baroclinic crest passage. Large-amplitude, small-scale internal waves are triggered by tidal forcing, consistent with lee-wave formation at the ridge break. These waves have vertical wavelengths on the order of 400 m. During spring tides, the waves are nonlinear and exhibit convective instabilities on their leading edge. Dissipation rates exceed those predicted by the open-ocean parameterizations by up to a factor of 100, with the disparity increasing as the seafloor is approached. These observations are based on a set of repeated CTD and microconductivity profiles obtained from the research platform (R/P) Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP), which was trimoored over the southern edge of the ridge crest. Ocean velocity and shear were resolved to a 4-m vertical scale by a suspended Doppler sonar. Dissipation was estimated both by measuring overturn displacements and from microconductivity wavenumber spectra. The methods agreed in water deeper than 200 m, where sensor resolution limitations do not limit the turbulence estimates. At intense mixing sites new phenomena await discovery, and existing parameterizations cannot be expected to apply.
    Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation as a component of the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Program. Added support for FLIP was provided by the Office of Naval Research.
    Keywords: Pacific Ocean ; Topographic effects ; Internal waves ; Barotropic flows ; Baroclinic flows
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  • 35
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 1203–1221, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3768.1.
    Description: Analyses of current time series longer than 200 days from 33 sites over the Middle Atlantic Bight continental shelf reveal a consistent mean circulation pattern. The mean depth-averaged flow is equatorward, alongshelf, and increases with increasing water depth from 3 cm s−1 at the 15-m isobath to 10 cm s−1 at the 100-m isobath. The mean cross-shelf circulation exhibits a consistent cross-shelf and vertical structure. The near-surface flow is typically offshore (positive, range −3 to 6 cm s−1). The interior flow is onshore and remarkably constant (−0.2 to −1.4 cm s−1). The near-bottom flow increases linearly with increasing water depth from −1 cm s−1 (onshore) in shallow water to 4 cm s−1 (offshore) at the 250-m isobath over the slope, with the direction reversal near the 50-m isobath. A steady, two-dimensional model (no along-isobath variations in the flow) reproduces the main features of the observed circulation pattern. The depth-averaged alongshelf flow is primarily driven by an alongshelf pressure gradient (sea surface slope of 3.7 × 10−8 increasing to the north) and an opposing mean wind stress that also drives the near-surface offshore flow. The alongshelf pressure gradient accounts for both the increase in the alongshelf flow with water depth and the geostrophic balance onshore flow in the interior. The increase in the near-bottom offshore flow with water depth is due to the change in the relative magnitude of the contributions from the geostrophic onshore flow that dominates in shallow water and the offshore flow driven by the bottom stress that dominates in deeper water.
    Description: This research was funded by Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-820773, OCE-841292, and OCE-848961.
    Keywords: Ocean models ; Ocean circulation ; Continental shelf ; Currents ; In situ observations
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  • 36
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1092–1097, doi:10.1175/JPO3045.1.
    Description: The impact of the observed relationship between sea surface temperature and surface wind stress on baroclinic instability in the ocean is explored using linear theory and a nonlinear model. A simple parameterization of the influence of sea surface temperature on wind stress is used to derive a surface boundary condition for the vertical velocity at the base of the oceanic Ekman layer. This boundary condition is applied to the classic linear, quasigeostrophic stability problem for a uniformly sheared flow originally studied by Eady in the 1940s. The results demonstrate that for a wind directed from warm water toward cold water, the coupling acts to enhance the growth rate, and increase the wavelength, of the most unstable wave. Winds in the opposite sense reduce the growth rate and decrease the wavelength of the most unstable wave. For representative coupling strengths, the change in growth rate can be as large as ±O(50%). This effect is largest for shallow, strongly stratified, low-latitude flows.
    Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-05-1-0300.
    Keywords: Wind stress ; Instability ; Sea surface temperature ; Baroclinic flows ; Ocean dynamics
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  • 37
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1177-1191, doi:10.1175/jpo3054.1.
    Description: The stability of baroclinic Rossby waves in large ocean basins is examined, and the quasigeostrophic (QG) results of LaCasce and Pedlosky are generalized. First, stability equations are derived for perturbations on large-scale waves, using the two-layer shallow-water system. These equations resemble the QG stability equations, except that they retain the variation of the internal deformation radius with latitude. The equations are solved numerically for different initial conditions through eigenmode calculations and time stepping. The fastest-growing eigenmodes are intensified at high latitudes, and the slower-growing modes are intensified at lower latitudes. All of the modes have meridional scales and growth times that are comparable to the deformation radius in the latitude range where the eigenmode is intensified. This is what one would expect if one had applied QG theory in latitude bands. The evolution of large-scale waves was then simulated using the Regional Ocean Modeling System primitive equation model. The results are consistent with the theoretical predictions, with deformation-scale perturbations growing at rates inversely proportional to the local deformation radius. The waves succumb to the perturbations at the mid- to high latitudes, but are able to cross the basin at low latitudes before doing so. Also, the barotropic waves produced by the instability propagate faster than the baroclinic long-wave speed, which may explain the discrepancy in speeds noted by Chelton and Schlax.
    Description: PEI was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Norwegian Research Council, JHL was supported under the Norwegian NOCLIM II program, and JP was partly supported by NSF OCE 0451086.
    Keywords: Rossby waves ; Ocean models ; Barotropic flows ; Baroclinic flows
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  • 38
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 1874–1893, doi:10.1175/2011JPO4604.1.
    Description: A two-dimensional cross-shelf model of the New England continental shelf and slope is used to investigate the mean cross-shelf and vertical circulation at the shelf break and their seasonal variation. The model temperature and salinity fields are nudged toward climatology. Annual and seasonal mean wind stresses are applied on the surface in separate equilibrium simulations. The along-shelf pressure gradient force associated with the along-shelf sea level tilt is tuned to match the modeled and observed depth-averaged along-shelf velocity. Steady-state model solutions show strong seasonal variation in along-shelf and cross-shelf velocity, with the strongest along-shelf jet and interior onshore flow in winter, consistent with observations. Along-shelf sea level tilt associated with the tuned along-shelf pressure gradient increases shoreward because of decreasing water depth. The along-shelf sea level tilt varies seasonally with the wind and is the strongest in winter and weakest in summer. A persistent upwelling is generated at the shelf break with a maximum strength of 2 m day−1 at 50-m depth in winter. The modeled shelfbreak upwelling differs from the traditional view in that most of the upwelled water is from the upper continental slope instead of from the shelf in the form of a detached bottom boundary layer.
    Description: WGZ was supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholarship program. GGGandDJMwere supported byONRGrant N-00014- 06-1-0739.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; North Atlantic Ocean
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  • 39
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 2168–2186, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-08.1.
    Description: This paper studies the interaction of an Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)–like wind-driven channel flow with a continental slope and a flat-bottomed bay-shaped shelf near the channel’s southern boundary. Interaction between the model ACC and the topography in the second layer induces local changes of the potential vorticity (PV) flux, which further causes the formation of a first-layer PV front near the base of the topography. Located between the ACC and the first-layer slope, the newly formed PV front is constantly perturbed by the ACC and in turn forces the first-layer slope with its own variability in an intermittent but persistent way. The volume transport of the slope water across the first-layer slope edge is mostly directly driven by eddies and meanders of the new front, and its magnitude is similar to the maximum Ekman transport in the channel. Near the bay’s opening, the effect of the topographic waves, excited by offshore variability, dominates the cross-isobath exchange and induces a mean clockwise shelf circulation. The waves’ propagation is only toward the west and tends to be blocked by the bay’s western boundary in the narrow-shelf region. The ensuing wave–coast interaction amplifies the wave amplitude and the cross-shelf transport. Because the interaction only occurs near the western boundary, the shelf water in the west of the bay is more readily carried offshore than that in the east and the mean shelf circulation is also intensified along the bay’s western boundary.
    Description: Y. Zhang acknowledges the support of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Physical Oceanography and NSF OCE-9901654 and OCE- 0451086. J. Pedlosky acknowledges the support of NSF OCE-9901654 and OCE-0451086.
    Keywords: Baroclinic flows ; Eddies ; Fronts ; Mass fluxes/transport ; Mesoscale processes ; Topographic effects
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  • 40
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 343–349, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00059.1.
    Description: The Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) is a major component of the tropical Pacific Ocean circulation. EUC velocity in most global climate models is sluggish relative to observations. Insufficient ocean resolution slows the EUC in the eastern Pacific where nonlinear terms should dominate the zonal momentum balance. A slow EUC in the east creates a bottleneck for the EUC to the west. However, this bottleneck does not impair other major components of the tropical circulation, including upwelling and poleward transport. In most models, upwelling velocity and poleward transport divergence fall within directly estimated uncertainties. Both of these transports play a critical role in a theory for how the tropical Pacific may change under increased radiative forcing, that is, the ocean dynamical thermostat mechanism. These findings suggest that, in the mean, global climate models may not underrepresent the role of equatorial ocean circulation, nor perhaps bias the balance between competing mechanisms for how the tropical Pacific might change in the future. Implications for model improvement under higher resolution are also discussed.
    Description: KBK gratefully acknowledges the J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund. GCJ is supported by NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. RM gratefully acknowledges the generous support and hospitality of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change and CAOS at IISc, Bangalore, and partial support by NASA PO grants.
    Description: 2012-07-01
    Keywords: Tropics ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics ; Climate models ; Coupled models ; Ocean models
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  • 41
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 1083–1098, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-015.1.
    Description: Here, the response of a coastally trapped buoyant plume to downwelling-favorable wind forcing is explored using a simplified two-dimensional numerical model and a prognostic theory for the resulting width, depth, and density anomaly and along-shelf transport of the plume. Consistent with the numerical simulations, the analytical model shows that the wind causes mixing of the plume water and that the forced cross-shelf circulation can also generate significant deepening and surface narrowing, as well as increased along-shelf transport. The response is due to a combination of the purely advective process that leads to the steepening of the isopycnals and the entrainment of ambient water into the plume. The advective component depends on the initial plume geometry: plumes that have a large fraction of their total width in contact with the bottom (“bottom trapped”) suffer relatively small depth and width changes compared to plumes that have a large fraction of their total width detached from the bottom (“surface trapped”). Key theoretical parameters are Wγ/Wα, the ratio of the width of the plume detached from the bottom to the width of the plume in contact with it, and the ratio of the wind-generated mixed layer δe to the initial plume depth hp, which determines the amount of water initially entrained into the plume. The model results also show that the cross-shelf circulation can be strongly influenced by the wind-driven response in combination with the geostrophic shear of the plume. The continuous entrainment into the plume, as well as transient events, is also discussed.
    Description: This work has been supported by FONDECYT Grant 1070501. S. Lentz received support by theNational Science Foundation GrantOCE-0751554. C. Moffat had additional support from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs through U.S. Southern Ocean GLOBEC Grants OPP 99-10092 and 06- 23223.
    Description: 2013-01-01
    Keywords: Baroclinic flows ; Boundary currents ; Coastal flows ; Upwelling/downwelling ; Wind ; Ocean models
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  • 42
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1993
    Description: Reciprocal acoustic transmissions made in a region just south of the Gulf Stream are analyzed to determine the structure and variability of temperature, current velocity, and vorticity fields at the northern extent of the southern recirculation gyre. For ten months (November, 1988 through August, 1989), a pentagonal array of tomographic transceivers was situated in a region centered at 38°N, 55°W as part of the eastern array of the SYNOP (SYNoptic Ocean Prediction) Experiment. The region of focus is one rich in mesoscale energy, with the influence of local Gulf Stream meandering and cold-core ring activity strikingly evident. Daily-averaged acoustic transmissions yielded travel times which were inverted to obtain estimates of range-averaged temperature and current velocity fields, and area-averaged relative vorticity fields. The acoustically determined estimates are consistent with nearby current meter measurements and satellite infrared imagery. The signature of cold-core rings is clearly evident in the sections. Spectral estimates of the fields are dominated by motions with periodicities ranging from 32-128 days. Second-order statistics, such as eddy kinetic energies, and heat and momentum fluxes, are also estimated. The integrating nature of the tomographic measurement has been exploited to shed some light on the radiation of eddy energy from the Gulf Stream. The Eliassen-Palm flux diagnostic has been applied to an investigation of wave radiation from the Gulf Stream. Results of the diagnosis suggest that the Gulf Stream itself is the source of wave energy radiating into the far field and found in the interior of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre.
    Description: This research was carried out under Office of Naval Research (ONR) University Research Initiative contract N00014-86-K-0751 and ONR contract N00014- 90-J-1481. Construction of the tomographic instruments was supported by grants and contracts with MIT: National Science Foundation grant OCE 85-12430 and by ONR. The field work was supported by ONR under contract N00014-85-G-0241 (Secretary of the Navy Professorship (C. Wunsch)).
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Tomography
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  • 43
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 March 1989
    Description: The general theme of this thesis is the study of systematic mathematical techniques for determining the ocean circulation from classical hydrographic data. Two aspects of this theme are analyzed. The first is finding an efficient representation of hydrographic structure so as to make it most useful and informative. The second is application of inverse methods to the data to determine ocean circulation. Both subjects are examined in the North Atlantic Ocean. The efficient representation is examined in terms of empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) among the variations in vertical hydrographic profiles. The data used are of a new set of high quality hydrography, all obtained in the early 1980s. Common EOFs are examined among temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, silicate, and nitrate. The EOFs identify a fundamental simplicity in the spatial distributions of t hese properties. Although the volume of numbers involved in the raw data is large, the significant degrees of freedom are only six in space and two among the six properties; temperature and salinity are represented by one mode, while the nutrients by another. The modal structure reflects some underlying simplicity in ocean physics. EOFs form a quantitative basis from which models of the ocean's hydrographic structure can be constructed for various degrees of complexities. As for the second aspect, two applications of inverse methods are explored on small regional scales. The first problem addressed concerns the circulation inside a 12° square located in the eastern basin over the axis of the Mediterranean Water tongue. The study is based on an ocean model constructed by mapping the modes identified in the first half of the thesis over the entire North Atlantic Ocean. A combination of box model inverse and β-spiral method is used to determine the geostrophic reference level velocities. The circulation consists of an anticyclonic circulation near the surface, which is part of the eastern half of the wind-driven subtropical gyre. The flow at depth is weak, and is a cyclonic circulation around the core of the Mediterranean Water tongue. In the second inverse problem, we examine a decaying warm-core ring. Observations of a warm-core ring are used to formulate a model for diagnosing the physics of ring change over a two month period. About 30 hydrographic casts and acoustic doppler current measurements are used to generate estimates of an equivalent radially symmetric ring with radial contrasts of stratification, temperature, salinity, azimuthal velocity, angular momentum, and potential vorticity. A series of related models are inverted for the ring circulation and mixing coefficients. The circulation is insensitive to the model details, is well-resolved, and is a radial outflow and upwelling. Eddy coefficients are only partially resolved; determining the mixing with any degree of confidence appears to require a much more elaborate data set than the one available.
    Description: This research was funded in part by the Office of Naval Research (Secretary of the Navy Chair) and the National Science Foundation under grant OCE 85-21685.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Hydrography ; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC133 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN129 ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN104 ; Atlantis II (Ship : 1963-) Cruise AII109 ; Hudson (Ship) Cruise 82
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  • 44
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 1996
    Description: A convection experiment was done with a rotating rectangular tank as a model of oceanic meridional overturning circulation. Heat flux was fixed at one bottom end of the tank using an electrical heater. Temperature was fixed at the other end using a cooling plate. All other boundaries were insulated. The cross sections of temperature field were made at several locations. In equilibrium, the heat input to the fluid H was the same as the meridional heat flux (heat flux from the source to the sink), so it was possible to find a scaling law relating H to the temperature difference across the tank ΔT and rotation rate f. The experimental result suggests that the meridional heat transport in the experiment was mostly due to geostrophic flows with a minor correction caused by the bottom friction. If there was no friction, the scaling law from the experiment resembles the one verified in part in the numerical model by Bryan and Cox (1967). Flow visualization and temperature sections showed that there were meridional geostrophic currents that transported heat. When the typical values of the North Atlantic are introduced, the geostrophic scaling law predicts meridional heat flux comparable to that estimated in the North Atlantic when the vertical eddy diffusivity of heat is about 1cm2s-1. Naturally, this experiment is a only crude model of the oceanic convective circulation. We do not claim that the geostrophic scaling applies in detail to the oceans, however, it may have some important use in climate modeling. For example, almost all existing box models and two-dimensional numerical models of ocean circulation use a frictional scaling law for buoyancy transport. A box model with the geostrophic scaling law is shown to be more robust to a change in the boundary forcing so that it is less likely to have a thermohaline catastrophic transition under the present conditions. It is also shown that a restoring boundary condition for salinity introduces stability to a thermal mode circulation, unless the restoring time for salinity is several orders of magnitude larger than that for temperature.
    Description: This study has been funded by NSF grant number OCE92-01464 and Korean Government Overseas Scholarship Grant.
    Keywords: Heat ; Rotating masses of fluid ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean temperature ; Thermoclines
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  • 45
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2013
    Description: Large-scale thermal forcing and freshwater fluxes play an essential role in setting temperature and salinity in the ocean. A number of recent estimates of the global oceanic freshwater balance as well as the global oceanic surface net heat flux are used to investigate the effects of heat- and freshwater forcing at the ocean surface. Such forcing induces changes in both density and density-compensated temperature and salinity changes (’spice’). The ratio of the relative contributions of haline and thermal forcing in the mixed layer is maintained by large-scale surface fluxes, leading to important consequences for mixing in the ocean interior. In a stratified ocean, mixing processes can be either along lines of constant density (isopycnal) or across those lines (diapycnal). The contribution of these processes to the total mixing rate in the ocean can be estimated from the large-scale forcing by evaluating the production of thermal variance, salinity variance and temperature-salinity covariance. Here, I use new estimates of surface fluxes to evaluate these terms and combine them to generate estimates of the production of density and spice variance under the assumption of a linear equation of state. As a consequence, it is possible to estimate the relative importance of isopycnal and diapycnal mixing in the ocean. While isopycnal and diapycnal processes occur on very different length scales, I find that the surface-driven production of density and spice variance requires an approximate equipartition between isopycnal and diapycnal mixing in the ocean interior. In addition, consideration of the full nonlinear equation of state reveals that surface fluxes require an apparent buoyancy gain (expansion) of the ocean, which allows an estimate of the amount of contraction on mixing due to cabbeling in the ocean interior.
    Description: The author would like to acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, grant #NNX12AF59G and the National Science Foundation, grant #OCE-0647949.
    Keywords: Oceanic mixing ; Ocean circulation
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  • 46
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 546–561, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0082.1.
    Description: Model studies and observations in the Hudson River estuary indicate that frontogenesis occurs as a result of topographic forcing. Bottom fronts form just downstream of lateral constrictions, where the width of the estuary increases in the down-estuary (i.e., seaward) direction. The front forms during the last several hours of the ebb, when the combination of adverse pressure gradient in the expansion and baroclinicity cause a stagnation of near-bottom velocity. Frontogenesis is observed in two dynamical regimes: one in which the front develops at a transition from subcritical to supercritical flow and the other in which the flow is everywhere supercritical. The supercritical front formation appears to be associated with lateral flow separation. Both types of fronts are three-dimensional, with strong lateral gradients along the flanks of the channel. During spring tide conditions, the fronts dissipate during the flood, whereas during neap tides the fronts are advected landward during the flood. The zone of enhanced density gradient initiates frontogenesis at multiple constrictions along the estuary as it propagates landward more than 60 km during several days of neap tides. Frontogenesis and frontal propagation may thus be essential elements of the spring-to-neap transition to stratified conditions in partially mixed estuaries.
    Description: Support for this research was provided by NSF Grant OCE 0926427.
    Description: 2015-08-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Baroclinic flows ; Coastal flows ; Frontogenesis/frontolysis ; Fronts
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  • 47
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 966–987, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0110.1.
    Description: A key remaining challenge in oceanography is the understanding and parameterization of small-scale mixing. Evidence suggests that topographic features play a significant role in enhancing mixing in the Southern Ocean. This study uses 914 high-resolution hydrographic profiles from novel EM-APEX profiling floats to investigate turbulent mixing north of the Kerguelen Plateau, a major topographic feature in the Southern Ocean. A shear–strain finescale parameterization is applied to estimate diapycnal diffusivity in the upper 1600 m of the ocean. The indirect estimates of mixing match direct microstructure profiler observations made simultaneously. It is found that mixing intensities have strong spatial and temporal variability, ranging from O(10−6) to O(10−3) m2 s−1. This study identifies topographic roughness, current speed, and wind speed as the main factors controlling mixing intensity. Additionally, the authors find strong regional variability in mixing dynamics and enhanced mixing in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current frontal region. This enhanced mixing is attributed to dissipating internal waves generated by the interaction of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the topography of the Kerguelen Plateau. Extending the mixing observations from the Kerguelen region to the entire Southern Ocean, this study infers a large water mass transformation rate of 17 Sverdrups (Sv; 1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) across the boundary of Antarctic Intermediate Water and Upper Circumpolar Deep Water in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This work suggests that the contribution of mixing to the Southern Ocean overturning circulation budget is particularly significant in fronts.
    Description: AM was supported by the joint CSIRO–University of Tasmania Quantitative Marine Science (QMS) program and the 2009 CSIRO Wealth from Ocean Flagship Collaborative Fund. BMS was supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Program, jointly funded by the Department of the Environment and CSIRO. KLPs salary support was provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution bridge support funds.
    Description: 2015-10-01
    Keywords: Geographic location/entity ; Southern Ocean ; Circulation/ Dynamics ; Diapycnal mixing ; Fronts ; Ocean circulation ; Topographic effects ; Atm/Ocean Structure/ Phenomena ; Mixing
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  • 48
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 2598–2620, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0249.1.
    Description: Through combining analytical arguments and numerical models, this study investigates the finite-amplitude meanders of shelfbreak fronts characterized by sloping isopycnals outcropping at both the surface and the shelfbreak bottom. The objective is to provide a formula for the meander length scale that can explain observed frontal length scale variability and also be verified with observations. Considering the frontal instability to be a mixture of barotropic and baroclinic instability, the derived along-shelf meander length scale formula is [b1/(1 + a1S1/2)]NH/f, where N is the buoyancy frequency; H is the depth of the front; f is the Coriolis parameter; S is the Burger number measuring the ratio of energy conversion associated with barotropic and baroclinic instability; and a1 and b1 are empirical constants. Initial growth rate of the frontal instability is formulated as [b2(1 + a1S1/2)/(1 + a2αS1/2)]NH/L, where α is the bottom slope at the foot of the front, and a2 and b2 are empirical constants. The formulas are verified using numerical sensitivity simulations, and fitting of the simulated and formulated results gives a1 = 2.69, b1 = 14.65, a2 = 5.1 × 103, and b2 = 6.2 × 10−2. The numerical simulations also show development of fast-growing frontal symmetric instability when the minimum initial potential vorticity is negative. Although frontal symmetric instability leads to faster development of barotropic and baroclinic instability at later times, it does not significantly influence the meander length scale. The derived meander length scale provides a framework for future studies of the influences of external forces on shelfbreak frontal circulation and cross-frontal exchange.
    Description: WGZ and GGG were supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-1129125.
    Description: 2016-04-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Instability ; Ocean circulation ; Topographic effects ; Atm/Ocean Structure/ Phenomena ; Fronts ; Models and modeling ; Numerical analysis/modeling
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  • 49
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 2913–2932, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0179.1.
    Description: The oceanic deep circulation is shared between concentrated deep western boundary currents (DWBCs) and broader interior pathways, a process that is sensitive to seafloor topography. This study investigates the spreading and deepening of Denmark Strait overflow water (DSOW) in the western subpolar North Atlantic using two ° eddy-resolving Atlantic simulations, including a passive tracer injected into the DSOW. The deepest layers of DSOW transit from a narrow DWBC in the southern Irminger Sea into widespread westward flow across the central Labrador Sea, which remerges along the Labrador coast. This abyssal circulation, in contrast to the upper levels of overflow water that remain as a boundary current, blankets the deep Labrador Sea with DSOW. Farther downstream after being steered around the abrupt topography of Orphan Knoll, DSOW again leaves the boundary, forming cyclonic recirculation cells in the deep Newfoundland basin. The deep recirculation, mostly driven by the meandering pathway of the upper North Atlantic Current, leads to accumulation of tracer offshore of Orphan Knoll, precisely where a local maximum of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) inventory is observed. At Flemish Cap, eddy fluxes carry ~20% of the tracer transport from the boundary current into the interior. Potential vorticity is conserved as the flow of DSOW broadens at the transition from steep to less steep continental rise into the Labrador Sea, while around the abrupt topography of Orphan Knoll, potential vorticity is not conserved and the DSOW deepens significantly.
    Description: This work is supported by ONR Award N00014-09-1-0587, the NSF Physical Oceanography Program, and NASA Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Program.
    Description: 2016-06-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Abyssal circulation ; Boundary currents ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics ; Potential vorticity ; Topographic effects
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  • 50
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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): 3011-3029, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0248.1.
    Description: Seasonal variability of the tropical Atlantic circulation is dominated by the annual cycle, but semiannual variability is also pronounced, despite weak forcing at that period. This study uses multiyear, full-depth velocity measurements from the central equatorial Atlantic to analyze the vertical structure of annual and semiannual variations of zonal velocity. A baroclinic modal decomposition finds that the annual cycle is dominated by the fourth mode and the semiannual cycle is dominated by the second mode. Similar local behavior is found in a high-resolution general circulation model. This simulation reveals that the annual and semiannual cycles of the respective dominant baroclinic modes are associated with characteristic basinwide structures. Using an idealized, linear, reduced-gravity model to simulate the dynamics of individual baroclinic modes, it is shown that the observed circulation variability can be explained by resonant equatorial basin modes. Corollary simulations of the reduced-gravity model with varying basin geometry (i.e., square basin vs realistic coastlines) or forcing (i.e., spatially uniform vs spatially variable wind) show a structural robustness of the simulated basin modes. A main focus of this study is the seasonal variability of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) as identified in recent observational studies. Main characteristics of the observed EUC including seasonal variability of transport, core depth, and maximum core velocity can be explained by the linear superposition of the dominant equatorial basin modes as obtained from the reduced-gravity model.
    Description: This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of the Sonderforschungsbereich 754 (SFB754) ‘‘Climate–Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean’’ and through several research cruises with R/V Meteor, R/V Maria S. Merian, andR/VL’Atalante by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the cooperative projects RACE (03F0605B) and SACUS (03G0837A) and by European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007–13) under Grant Agreement 603521 PREFACE project.
    Keywords: Atlantic Ocean ; Ocean circulation ; In situ oceanic observations ; Ocean models ; Seasonal cycle ; Tropical variability
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  • 51
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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
    Keywords: Atlantic Ocean ; Mass fluxes/transport ; Ocean circulation ; Trajectories ; Statistics
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  • 52
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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.
    Keywords: North Atlantic Ocean ; Atmosphere-ocean interaction ; Ekman pumping/transport ; Ocean circulation ; Water masses ; Inverse methods
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  • 53
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 573-590, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0206.1.
    Description: Motivated by the proximity of the Northern Recirculation Gyre and the deep western boundary current in the North Atlantic, an idealized model is used to investigate how recirculation gyres and a deep flow along a topographic slope interact. In this two-layer quasigeostrophic model, an unstable jet imposed in the upper layer generates barotropic recirculation gyres. These are maintained by an eddy-mean balance of potential vorticity (PV) in steady state. The authors show that the topographic slope can constrain the northern recirculation gyre meridionally and that the gyre’s adjustment to the slope leads to increased eddy PV fluxes at the base of the slope. When a deep current is present along the topographic slope in the lower layer, these eddy PV fluxes stir the deep current and recirculation gyre waters. Increased proximity to the slope dampens the eddy growth rate within the unstable jet, altering the geometry of recirculation gyre forcing and leading to a decrease in overall eddy PV fluxes. These mechanisms may shape the circulation in the western North Atlantic, with potential feedbacks on the climate system.
    Description: We gratefully acknowledge an AMS graduate fellowship (IALB) and U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1332667 and 1332834 (IALB and JMT).
    Description: 2018-09-06
    Keywords: Boundary currents ; Meridional overturning circulation ; Mesoscale processes ; Ocean circulation ; Potential vorticity ; Quasigeostrophic models
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  • 54
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 739-748, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0089.1.
    Description: McDougall and Ferrari have estimated the global deep upward diapycnal flow in the boundary layer overlying continental slopes that must balance both downward diapycnal flow in the deep interior and the formation of bottom water around Antarctica. The decrease of perimeter of isopycnal surfaces with depth and the observed decay with height above bottom of turbulent dissipation in the deep ocean play a key role in their estimate. They argue that because the perimeter of seamounts increases with depth, the net effect of mixing around seamounts is to produce net downward diapycnal flow. While this is true along much of a seamount, it is shown here that diapycnal flow of the densest water around the seamount is upward, with buoyancy being transferred from water just above. The same is true for midocean ridges, whose perimeter is constant with depth. It is argued that mixing around seamounts and especially midocean ridges contributes positively to the global deep overturning circulation, reducing the amount of turbulence demanded over the continental slopes to balance the buoyancy budget for the bottom and deep water.
    Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant OCE- 1232962.
    Description: 2018-09-29
    Keywords: Abyssal circulation ; Boundary currents ; Buoyancy ; Diapycnal mixing ; Mass fluxes/transport ; Ocean circulation
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 643-646, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0240.1.
    Description: A simple oceanic model is presented for source–sink flow on the β plane to discuss the pathways from source to sink when transport boundary layers have large enough Reynolds numbers to be inertial in their dynamics. A representation of the flow as a Fofonoff gyre, suggested by prior work on inertial boundary layers and eddy-driven circulations in two-dimensional turbulent flows, indicates that even when the source and sink are aligned along the same western boundary the flow must intrude deep into the interior before exiting at the sink. The existence of interior pathways for the flow is thus an intrinsic property of an inertial circulation and is not dependent on particular geographical basin geometry.
    Description: 2018-09-12
    Keywords: Abyssal circulation ; Bottom currents ; Nonlinear dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics ; Potential vorticity
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  • 56
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 479-509, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0283.1.
    Description: Lateral submesoscale processes and their influence on vertical stratification at shallow salinity fronts in the central Bay of Bengal during the winter monsoon are explored using high-resolution data from a cruise in November 2013. The observations are from a radiator survey centered at a salinity-controlled density front, embedded in a zone of moderate mesoscale strain (0.15 times the Coriolis parameter) and forced by winds with a downfront orientation. Below a thin mixed layer, often ≤10 m, the analysis shows several dynamical signatures indicative of submesoscale processes: (i) negative Ertel potential vorticity (PV); (ii) low-PV anomalies with O(1–10) km lateral extent, where the vorticity estimated on isopycnals and the isopycnal thickness are tightly coupled, varying in lockstep to yield low PV; (iii) flow conditions susceptible to forced symmetric instability (FSI) or bearing the imprint of earlier FSI events; (iv) negative lateral gradients in the absolute momentum field (inertial instability); and (v) strong contribution from differential sheared advection at O(1) km scales to the growth rate of the depth-averaged stratification. The findings here show one-dimensional vertical processes alone cannot explain the vertical stratification and its lateral variability over O(1–10) km scales at the radiator survey.
    Description: S. Ramachandran acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through award OCE 1558849 and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17- 1-2355. A. Tandon acknowledges support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17-1-2355. J. T. Farrar and R. A. Weller were supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0453, to collect the UCTD data and process theUCTD and shipboard meteorological data. J. Nash, J. Mackinnon, and A. F. Waterhouse acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0503 and N00014-14-1-0455. E. Shroyer acknowledges support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-14-10236 and N00014-15- 12634. A. Mahadevan acknowledges support fromthe U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-10451. A. J. Lucas and R. Pinkel acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0489.
    Description: 2018-08-26
    Keywords: Indian Ocean ; Baroclinic flows ; Potential vorticity ; Fronts ; Monsoons ; Oceanic mixed layer
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 1831-1848, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0068.1.
    Description: We present a simplified theory using reduced-gravity equations for North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and its variation driven by high-latitude deep-water formation. The theory approximates layer thickness on the eastern boundary with domain-averaged layer thickness and, in tandem with a mass conservation argument, retains fundamental physics for cross-equatorial flows on interannual and longer forcing time scales. Layer thickness anomalies are driven by a time-dependent northern boundary condition that imposes a southward volume flux representative of a variable source of NADW and damped by diapycnal mixing throughout the basin. Moreover, an outflowing southern boundary condition imposes a southward volume flux that generally differs from the volume flux at the northern boundary, giving rise to temporal storage of NADW within the Atlantic basin. Closed form analytic solutions for the amplitude and phase are provided when the variable source of NADW is sinusoidal. We provide a nondimensional analysis that demonstrates that solution behavior is primarily controlled by two parameters that characterize the meridional extent of the southern basin and the width of the basin relative to the equatorial deformation radius. Similar scaling applied to the time-lagged equations of Johnson and Marshall provides a clear connection to their results. Numerical simulations of reduced-gravity equations agree with analytic predictions in linear, turbulent, and diabatic regimes. The theory introduces a simple analytic framework for studying idealized buoyancy- and wind-driven cross-equatorial flows on interannual and longer time scales.
    Description: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE- 1634468.
    Description: 2019-02-15
    Keywords: North Atlantic Ocean ; Tropics ; Meridional overturning circulation ; Ocean circulation ; Shallow-water equations
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  • 58
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 2457-2475, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0186.1.
    Description: A subpolar marginal sea, like the Nordic seas, is a transition zone between the temperature-stratified subtropics (the alpha ocean) and the salinity-stratified polar regions (the beta ocean). An inflow of Atlantic Water circulates these seas as a boundary current that is cooled and freshened downstream, eventually to outflow as Deep and Polar Water. Stratification in the boundary region is dominated by a thermocline over the continental slope and a halocline over the continental shelves, separating Atlantic Water from Deep and Polar Water, respectively. A conceptual model is introduced for the circulation and water mass transformation in a subpolar marginal sea to explore the potential interaction between the alpha and beta oceans. Freshwater input into the shelf regions has a slight strengthening effect on the Atlantic inflow, but more prominently impacts the water mass composition of the outflow. This impact of freshwater, characterized by enhancing Polar Water outflow and suppressing Deep Water outflow, is strongly determined by the source location of freshwater. Concretely, perturbations in upstream freshwater sources, like the Baltic freshwater outflow into the Nordic seas, have an order of magnitude larger potential to impact water mass transports than perturbations in downstream sources like the Arctic freshwater outflow. These boundary current dynamics are directly related to the qualitative stratification in transition zones and illustrate the interaction between the alpha and beta oceans.
    Description: This research was supported by the Research Council of Norway project NORTH. Support for the publication was provided by the University of Bergen. Ocean Outlook has supported a research visit for EL to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where much of the current work has been carried out. Support forMAS was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE-1558742.
    Keywords: Continental shelf/slope ; Baroclinic flows ; Boundary currents ; Buoyancy ; Freshwater ; Thermohaline circulation
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 883-904, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0084.1.
    Description: The dynamics controlling the along-valley (cross shelf) flow in idealized shallow shelf valleys with small to moderate Burger number are investigated, and analytical scales of the along-valley flows are derived. This paper follows Part I, which shows that along-shelf winds in the opposite direction to coastal-trapped wave propagation (upwelling regime) force a strong up-valley flow caused by the formation of a lee wave. In contrast, along-shelf winds in the other direction (downwelling regime) do not generate a lee wave and consequently force a relatively weak net down-valley flow. The valley flows in both regimes are cyclostrophic with 0(1) Rossby number. A major difference between the two regimes is the along-shelf length scales of the along-valley flows L. In the upwelling regime Ls, depends on the valley width W, and the wavelength lambda(1w) of the coastal-trapped lee wave arrested by the along-shelf flow U-s. In the downwelling regime L depends on the inertial length scale U-s|'f and W-c. The along-valley velocity scale in the upwelling regime, given by V-u approximate to root pi H-c/H-s integral W-c lambda(1w)/2 pi L-x (1+L-x(2)/L-c(2))(-1) e(-(pi Wc)/(lambda 1w),) is based on potential vorticity (PV) conservation and lee-wave dynamics (Hs and H, are the shelf and valley depth scales, respectively, and fis the Coriolis parameter). The velocity scale in the downwelling regime, given by |v(d)| approximate to (H-s/H-s)[1 + (L-x(2)/L-x(2))](-1) fL, is based on PV conservation. The velocity scales are validated by the numerical sensitivity simulations and can be useful for observational studies of along -valley transports. The work provides a framework for investigating cross -shelf transport induced by irregular shelf bathymetry and calls for future studies of this type under realistic environmental conditions and over a broader parameter space.
    Description: Both WGZ and SJL were supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grant OCE 1154575.WGZis also supported by the NSF Grant OCE 1634965 and SJL by NSF Grant OCE 1558874.
    Description: 2018-10-16
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Topographic effects ; Upwelling/downwelling ; Waves, oceanic ; Wind stress ; Ocean models
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  • 60
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 48 (2018): 2799-2827, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0057.1.
    Description: The fjords that connect Greenland’s glaciers to the ocean are gateways for importing heat to melt ice and for exporting meltwater into the ocean. The transport of heat and meltwater can be modulated by various drivers of fjord circulation, including freshwater, local winds, and shelf variability. Shelf-forced flows (also known as the intermediary circulation) are the dominant mode of variability in two major fjords of east Greenland, but we lack a dynamical understanding of the fjord’s response to shelf forcing. Building on observations from east Greenland, we use numerical simulations and analytical models to explore the dynamics of shelf-driven flows. For the parameter space of Greenlandic fjords, we find that the fjord’s response is primarily a function of three nondimensional parameters: the fjord width over the deformation radius (W/Rd), the forcing time scale over the fjord adjustment time scale, and the forcing amplitude (shelf pycnocline displacements) over the upper-layer thickness. The shelf-forced flows in both the numerical simulations and the observations can largely be explained by a simple analytical model for Kelvin waves propagating around the fjord. For fjords with W/Rd 〉 0.5 (most Greenlandic fjords), 3D dynamics are integral to understanding shelf forcing—the fjord dynamics cannot be approximated with 2D models that neglect cross-fjord structure. The volume flux exchanged between the fjord and shelf increases for narrow fjords and peaks around the resonant forcing frequency, dropping off significantly at higher- and lower-frequency forcing.
    Description: This work was funded by NSF Grant OCE-1536856 and by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship.
    Keywords: Estuaries ; Glaciers ; Baroclinic flows ; Coastal flows ; Kelvin waves ; Regional models
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: During the past four years a deliberate effort has been made at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to devise methods of kinematic observation generally suited to the needs of oceanographers. One result of this work, the electromagnetic method, has been brought from the experimental stage to one of useful maturity. Many of the theoretical potentialities of the method are still to be explored and developed. Nevertheless it seems likely that this remaining work may be done more soundly if present developments of the theory and instrumentation are made available for use and evaluation by, others. These studies in methods of kinematic observation have been supported mainly under the provisions of Bureau of Ships Contract NObs-2083, and Office of Naval Research Contract N6onr-277-1. This support and the assistance of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, the Hydrographic Office (Oceanographic Division), the United States Coast Guard, and the David Taylor Model Basin of the United States Navy is gratefully acknowledged.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean currents ; Tides ; Water current meters ; Oceanographic instruments ; Oceanography
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Book
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  • 62
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 January, 1978
    Description: Many of the small-scale topographic features (dimensions of centimeters to kilometers) found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge (western North Atiantic, water depth greater than 4000 m) and in the Rockall Trough (northeastern North Atlantic, water depth greater than 2000 m) have been formed as bed forms of deep currents. These bed forms, all developed in cohesive sediments, include current ripples (spacings of tens of centimeters, formed transverse to the flow), longitudinal triangular ripples (spacings of meters, formed in sandy muds and parallel to the flow), furrows (spacings of tens to 100's of meters, formed parallel to the flow and presently either erosional or depositional), and regular sediment waves (spacings of a few kilometers, now found oblique to the flow and migrating either upstream or downstream). The local distribution of any given bed form is influenced by the presence of larger features. Bed forms are often found in zones which strike parallel to the regional contours. Debris flows, affecting areas of 1000's to 10,000's of square kilometers, are also present in these areas. A debris flow studied in the Rockall Trough is erosional at its shallowest depths and depositional at greater depths. Gravitational flows strike perpendicular to the contours. Pockmarks (tens of meters in diameter, marking fluid seeps) are also found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge. The larger topographic features (greater than several meters) with steep slopes (greater than about 20°) can be observed on surface echo-sounding profiles either as fields of regular hyperbolic echoes (e.g., echoes from regularly spaced furrows), fields of irregularly spaced, dissimilar hyperbolae (e.g., echoes from blocks, ridges, and folds in debris flows), or as regular features whose structure is often obscured by side echoes (e.g., echoes from sediment waves). Although near-bottom investigations are required to describe the features, the nature of the sea floor can often be inferred from the character of the echo-sounding profile. Similar echo-sounding records in different areas of the ocean indicate the presence of similar sea-floor features. The morphology of the bed forms studied and the current and temperature structure of the overlying water column lead to conclusions about bed form origin and present-day interactions with deep currents. Furrows form as erosional bed forms during high-velocity (〉20? cm/sec) current events by large, helical secondary circulations in the bottom boundary layer. Once formed, furrows may develop into depositional features, or they may continue as erosional ones, depending on the local currents and the sediment supply. Large, regular sediment waves may be formed at current speeds of 5 to 10 cm/sec by lee waves generated by topographic irregularities on the sea floor, such as submarine canyons, or by instabilities in the flow of deep, contour-following currents. Sediment waves develop where there is an abundant supply of sediment and steady mean currents. Waves appear to migrate upstream where tidal current fluctuations are smaller than the mean velocity, and downstream where they are larger. Near-bottom currents appear to be faster on the downstream side of upstream-migrating sediment waves than on their upstream side. The resulting variations in bed shear stress lead to higher sedimentation rates on the upstream side and bed form migration in that direction.
    Description: This research was made possible by National Science Foundation grants DES 73-06657 and OCE 76-22152, and Office of Naval Research contract N00014-74-C-0262; NR083-004 to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, NSF grant OCE 74-01671 to Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, and numerous NSF grants and ONR contracts to Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
    Keywords: Marine sediments ; Submarine topography ; Ocean circulation ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN31 ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN51 ; Robert D. Conrad (Ship) Cruise RC18 ; Point Loma (Ship) Cruise
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  • 63
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2008
    Description: The mid-to-deep Arctic Ocean is generally characterized by a cyclonic circulation, contained along shelves and ridges. Here we analyze the general Arctic circulation using an idealized numerical model consisting of a circular basin with two channels acting as inflow and outflow. We analyze the circulation (direction, strength and sensitivity) for wind forcing with and without bathymetry (ridges), and with and without stratification. We find that the circulation is modified drastically by both bathymetry and wind direction, where an altered wind field can change both the direction of the horizontal basin circulation as well as the strength of the inflow and outflow. The idealized circulations imply that the Arctic circulation, and the associated export of freshwater, can easily switch states in a changing climate.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Computer simulation
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 64
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 1990
    Description: Theory and observations of deep circulation in the near-equatorial Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans are reviewed. Flow of deep and bottom water in the near-equatorial Indian and Pacific oceans, the two oceans with only a southern source of bottom water, is described through analysis of recent CTD data. Zero-velocity surfaces are chosen through use of water-mass properties and transports are estimated. Effects of basin geometry, bottom bathymetry and vertical diffusivity as well as a model meridional inertial current on a sloping bottom near the equator are all discussed in conjunction with the flow patterns inferred from observations. In the western equatorial Indian Ocean, repeat CTD surveys in the Somali Basin at the height of subsequent northeast and southwest monsoons show only small differences in the strength of the circulation of the bottom water (potential temperature θ ≤1.2°C). A deep western boundary current (DWBC) carrying about 4x106 m3 s-1 of this water is observed moving north along the continental rise of Africa at 3°S. The cross-equatorial sections suggest that the current turns eastward at the equator. The northern sections show a large mass of the coldest water in the interior east of the Chain Ridge, augmenting the evidence that the DWBC observed south of the equator turns east at the equator rather than remaining on the boundary, and feeds the interior circulation in the northern part of the basin from the equator. The circulation of deep water (1.2°C〈 θ ≤ 1.7°C) in the Somali and Arabian Basins is also analyzed. A DWBC flowing southward along the Carlsberg ridge in the Arabian Basin is described. In the central equatorial Pacific Ocean a recent zonal CTD section at 10°N, allows estimation that 5.0x106 m3 s-1 of Lower Circumpolar Water (LCPW, θ ≤ 1.2°C) moves northward as a DWBC along the Caroline Seamounts in the East Mariana Basin. In the Central Pacific Basin, 8.1x106 m3 s-1 of LCPW is estimated to move northward along the Marshal Seamounts as a DWBC at this latitude. An estimated 4.7x106 m3 s-1 of the LCPW moves back southward across 10°N in the Northeast Pacific Basin along the western flank of the East Pacific Rise and an equatorial jet is observed to flow westward from 138°W to 148°W shifting south of the Line Islands at 2.5°S, 159°W. The net northward flow of LCPW across 10°N in the Pacific Ocean is estimated at 8.4x106 m3 s-I. The net southward flow of the silica-rich North Pacific Deep Water (NPDW, 1.2 〈 θ ≤ 2.0°C) in the central Pacific Ocean estimated at 2.7x106 m3 s-1 is also discussed. In the Indian Ocean, the eastward equatorial flow in the the bottom water of the Somali Basin differs from the prediction of a flat-bottom uniform-upwelling Stommel-Arons calculation with realistic basin geometry and source location. The behavior of a uniform potential vorticity meridional jet on a sloping bottom is examined in an attempt to explain the observed behavior at the equator. The inertial jet does not cross the equator in a physically plausible fashion owing to the constraint of conservation of potential vorticity. Mass and heat budgets for the bottom water of the Somali Basin are of interest with respect to the equatorial feature. Upwelling through the θ = 1.2°C surface is estimated at 12±4x10-5 cm s-1 and a rough heat budget for the deep Somali Basin results in an estimate of vertical diffusivity of 9±5 cm2 s-1 at 3800 m. Numerical model results indicate that large vertical diffusivities result in eastward jets in the bottom water at the equator. In the Pacific Ocean the DWBC observed flowing northward south of the equator crosses the equator with transport nearly intact, albeit split into two at 10°N by the tortuous bathymetry. However the southward flow along the East Pacific Rise in the Northeast Pacific Basin and the westward equatorial jet this flow feeds are puzzling. The basin depth decreases equatorward and eastward, which may allow some southeastward flow in the Stommel-Arons framework. However, the equatorial jet is still unexplained. The estimated vertical velocity and diffusivity at 3600 db of 2±2x10-5 cm s-1 and 4±3 cm2 s-1 for the area between 12°8 and 10°N are much smaller than estimates in the Somali Basin. Thus the two oceans, similar in their single southern source of bottom water, have DWBC's which behave remarkably differently near the equator. In the Somali Basin of the Indian Ocean the DWBC appears to turn eastward at the equator, with large vertical upwelling velocity and large vertical diffusivity estimates for the bottom water of the basin. In the Pacific Ocean the DWBC appears to cross the equator, but there is a puzzling westward flowing equatorial jet in the bottom water of the Northeast Pacific Basin.
    Description: The author began this research in the M.I.T.-W.H.O.I Joint Program while supported by the U. S. Offce of Naval Research through a Secretary of the Navy Graduate Fellowship in Oceanography. Support for collection and analysis of the data taken during R.R.S. Charles Darwin cruises 86-19 and 87-25 was provided by the U. S. National Science Foundation under grants OCE8800135 and OCE8513825 to D. B. Olson at the University of Miami and by the U. S. Offce of Naval Research under contract N00014-87-K-0001, NR083-004 and grant N00014-89-J-1076 to B. A. Warren at W.H.O.I. Collection of data taken during R.Y. Moana Wave cruise 89- 3 was supp6rted by the U. S. National Science Foundation under grant OCE881691O to H. L. Bryden and J. M. Toole at W.H.O.I. Collection of data taken during the U.S.-P.R.C. Toga cruises was supported by N.O.A.A. under grant NA85AA-DACU7.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Moana Wave (Ship) Cruise MW89-3 ; Charles Darwin (Ship) Cruise CD86-19 ; Charles Darwin (Ship) Cruise CD87-25
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  • 65
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2003
    Description: Pathways of exchange between the shelf and slope in the Mid-Atlantic Bight were investigated using a combination of radiochemical tracer and hydrographic measurements. The motivation was to provide evidence of transport routes for shelfwater that could be important to the balance of shelf-slope exchange, as well as to the biogeochemical fluxes across this crucial ocean boundary. The four radium isotopes, with half-lives of 4 days to 1600 years, a coastal source, and conservative properties in seawater, were used as coastal water mass tracers. The final study was comprised of data from 5 cruises, with a total of 8 cross-shelfbreak transects. Two areas were studied, a northern Mid-Atlantic Bight transect south of Nantucket Shoals, and a southern Mid-Atlantic Bight series of transects off the coast of Delaware. In addition, data were collected from the shelfbreak at Cape Hatteras crossing the western wall of the Gulf Stream to help determine sources of anomalous 224Ra enrichment which was observed on several of the shelfbreak transects. Combined with the hydrographic data, radium measurements suggested a pathway for exchange in the Mid- Atlantic Bight that was not a direct advection of shelf water toward the slope. Rather, the evidence suggested limited direct exchange of surface shelf water across the shelfbreak front. This provides observational evidence that is consistent with models (e.g., Gawarkiewicz and Chapman, 1991) which predict the shelfbreak front will impede exchange. Furthermore, 224Ra activity on the upper slope points to a rapid transport pathway for bottom water from the Cape Hatteras shelf via the Gulf Stream onto the Mid-Atlantic Bight slope. The radiochemical and hydrographic evidence suggests that recirculation around the slope sea gyre may be a more important pathway than direct cross-shelf transport.
    Description: This work was supported by funding from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Academic Programs office, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Ventues Fund, National Science Foundation grant OCE-0097232, and Civilian Research and Development Foundation grant UGI-2432-SE-02.
    Keywords: Mid-Atlantic Bight ; Ocean circulation ; Radium ; Isotopes ; Radioactive tracers in oceanography ; Cape Hatteras (Ship) Cruise CH2300 ; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC349 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN335 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN348 ; Knorr (Ship : 1970-) Cruise KN164
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  • 66
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2009
    Description: Internal tides are internal waves of tidal period generated by tidal currents flowing over submarine topography. Tall ridges that are nominally two-dimensional (2-D) are sites of particularly strong generation. The subsequent dissipation of internal tides contributes to ocean mixing, thereby playing an important role in the circulation of the ocean. Strong internal tides can also evolve into internal wave solitons, which affect acoustic communication, offshore structures and submarine navigation. This thesis addresses the generation of internal tides by tall submarine ridges using a combined analytical and experimental approach. The first part of the thesis is an experimental investigation of a pre-existing Green function formulation for internal tide generation by a tall symmetric ridge in a uniform density stratification. A modal decomposition technique was developed to characterize the structure of the experimental wave fields generated by 2D model topographies in a specially configured wave tank. The theory accurately predicts the low mode structure of internal tides, and reasonably predicts the conversion rate of internal tides infinite tidal excursion regimes, for which the emergence of non-linearities was notable in the laboratory. In the second part of the thesis, the Green function method is advanced for asymmetric and multiple ridges in weakly non-uniform stratifications akin to realistic ocean situations. A preliminary investigation in uniform stratification with canonical asymmetric and double ridges reveals asymmetry in the internal tide that can be very sensitive to the geometric configuration. This approach is then used with realistic topography and stratification data to predict the internal tide generated by the ridges at Hawaii and at the Luzon Strait. Despite the assumption of two-dimensionality, there is remarkably good agreement between field data, simulations and the new theory for the magnitude, asymmetry and modal content of the internal tide at these sites. The final part of the thesis investigates the possibility of internal wave attractors in the valley of double-ridge configurations. A one-dimensional map is developed to identify the existence and stability of attractors as a function of the ridge geometry. The Green function method is further advanced to include a viscous correction to balance energy focusing and dissipation along an attracting orbit of internal wave rays, and very good agreement is obtained between experiment and theory, even in the presence of an attractor.
    Description: My Ph. D. and the work in this thesis have been generously funded by the National Science Foundation under grants OCE 0645529 and OCE 04-25283 and the Office of Naval Research under grants N00014-08-0390, N00014-05-1-0573 and N00014-09-0282.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Submarine topography
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 67
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2009
    Description: My thesis covers two general circulation problems that involve the stability of largescale oceanic flows and the importance of non-local effects. The first problem examines the stability of meridional boundary currents, which are found on both sides of most ocean basins because of the presence of continents. A linear stability analysis of a meridional boundary current on the beta-plane is performed using a quasi-geostrophic model in order to determine the existence of radiating instabilities, a type of instability that propagates energy away from its origin region by exciting Rossby waves and can thus act as a source of eddy energy for the ocean interior. It is found that radiating instabilities are commonly found in both eastern and western boundary currents. However, there are some significant differences that make eastern boundary currents more interesting from a radiation point of view. They possess a larger number of radiating modes, characterized by horizontal wavenumbers which would make them appear like zonal jets as they propagate into the ocean interior. The second problem examines the circulation in a nonlinear thermally-forced two-layer quasi-geostrophic ocean. The only driving force for the circulation in the model is a cross-isopycnal flux parameterized as interface relaxation. This forcing is similar to the radiative damping used commonly in atmospheric models, except that it is applied to the ocean circulation in a closed basin and is meant to represent the large-scale thermal forcing acting on the oceans. It is found that in the strongly nonlinear regime a substantial, not directly thermally-driven barotropic circulation is generated. Its variability in the limit of weak bottom drag is dominated by high-frequency barotropic basin modes. It is demonstrated that the excitation of basin normal modes has significant consequences for the mean state of the system and its variability, conclusions that are likely to apply for any other system whose variability is dominated by basin modes, no matter the forcing. A linear stability analysis performed on a wind- and a thermally-forced double-gyre circulation reveals that under certain conditions the basin modes can arise from local instabilities of the flow.
    Description: I was supported through a graduate research assistantship from the National Science Foundation Grant OCE-0423975 and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Academic Programs Office.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Ocean circulation
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  • 68
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 August 1987
    Description: This thesis consists of two loosely related problems, both of which analyze some consequences of the failure of Sverdrup relation. In the first part, Chapters 2 and 3, the Sverdrup relation is invalidated because substantial flow is obtained at the bottom where topography exists. The eddies play an essential role in transfering momentum vertically from the surface, where the forcing is applied, to the bottom, which is otherwise unforced. If the topography has a structure in the longitudinal direction, then the inviscid theory predicts the occurence of strong jets in the interior of the model ocean. According to the structure of the topography these internal jets can occur in both vertically homeogenous and baroclinic oceans. If the topographic slope changes sign, then one kind of jets is observed both in stratified and in homogeneous oceans. This phenomenon is robust to moderate amounts of dissipation and is not disturbed by the occurrence of recirculating gyres within the basin. If the topographic slope is constant, then another kind of internal jets is observed, and it occurs in stratified models only. I was unable to observe this kind of jets in the presence of weak dissipation. The reason for this failure is twofold: on one hand friction, especially interfacial friction, tends to make the flow more barotropic (and we believe that indeed this is one of the processes that the eddies accomplish in a stratified fluid) and therefore the phenomena that rely strongly on baroclinicity are discouraged. On the other hand, reduction of the dissipation leads to the onset of a strong recirculating, inertial gyre which, although confined in space, affects the global properties of the flow. In the second part of the thesis (Chapters 4 and 5) I developed a simple model of the recirculating, inertial gyre. Again the dynamics of this feature are far from being in Sverdrup balance. In this case inertia is responsible for the failure of Sverdrup relation, together with the eddy field which provides a mean for transfering momentum vertically and laterally into regions away from where the forcing is applied. In this model there is no direct forcing in the recirculation region, and the input of momentum is confined to the boundary currents surrounding the gyre, for example the separated Gulf Stream. One of the results of the recirculation model is the prediction of its transport. It is shown that most of the transport is depth independent, i.e. it can be calculated without detailed knowledge of the density structure of the ocean. It is also shown that the "barotropic" part of the transport increases as the cube of the meridional extent of the gyre.
    Description: The thesis work has been supported by a National Foundation grant from the Office of Atmospheric Sciences.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Oceanic mixing
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 69
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 1441–1457, doi:10.1175/2010JPO4293.1.
    Description: Based on the classical Ekman layer theory, a simple analytical solution of the steady flow induced by a stationary hurricane in a homogenous ocean is discussed. The model consists of flow converging in an inward spiral in the deeper layer and diverging in the upper layer. The simple analytical model indicates that both the upwelling flux and the horizontal transport increase linearly with increasing radius of maximum winds. Furthermore, they both have a parabolic relationship with the maximum wind speed. The Coriolis parameter also affects the upwelling flux: the response to a hurricane is stronger at low latitudes than that at middle latitudes. Numerical solutions based on a regional version of an ocean general circulation model are similar to the primary results obtained through the analytical solution. Thus, the simplifications made in formulating the analytical solution are reasonable. Although the analytical solution in this paper is sought for a rather idealized ocean, it can help to make results from the more complicated numerical model understandable. These conceptual models provide a theoretical limit structure of the oceanic response to a moving hurricane over a stratified ocean.
    Description: ZML was supported by CAS (kzcx2-yw-226, SQ200813), NSFC under Grants 40906009 and 40776008, and Dr. Xiaodong Shang through ‘‘100 Talents Program’’ of CAS.
    Keywords: Hurricanes ; Ocean circulation
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  • 70
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. 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 39 (2009): 2942-2956, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4041.1.
    Description: Recent work by S. Lentz et al. documents offshore transport in the inner shelf due to a wave-driven return flow associated with the Hasselmann wave stress (the Stokes–Coriolis force). This analysis is extended using observations from the central Oregon coast to identify the wave-driven return flow present and quantify the potential bias of wind-driven across-shelf exchange by unresolved wave-driven circulation. Using acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements at six stations, each in water depths of 13–15 m, observed depth-averaged, across-shelf velocities were generally correlated with theoretical estimates of the proposed return flow. During times of minimal wind forcing, across-shelf velocity profiles were vertically sheared, with stronger velocities near the top of the measured portion of the water column, and increased in magnitude with increasing significant wave height, consistent with circulation due to the Hasselmann wave stress. Yet velocity magnitudes and vertical shears were stronger than that predicted by linear wave theory, and more similar to the stratified “summer” velocity profiles described by S. Lentz et al. Additionally, substantial temporal and spatial variability of the wave-driven return flow was found, potentially due to changing wind and wave conditions as well as local bathymetric variability. Despite the wave-driven circulation found, subtracting estimates of the return flow from the observed across-shelf velocity had no significant effect on estimates of the across-shelf exchange due to along-shelf wind forcing at these water depths along the Oregon coast during summer.
    Description: This work was performed with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), funded primarily by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and David and Lucile Packard Foundation. SL acknowledges support from NSF Ocean Science Grant #OCE-0548961. AK acknowledges support from the WHOI Coastal Ocean Institute Fellowship.
    Keywords: Waves, oceanic ; Ekman pumping/transport ; Coastlines ; Ocean circulation ; Gravity waves
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  • 71
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. 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 39 (2009): 1231-1243, doi:10.1175/2008JPO4087.1.
    Description: As a driving parameter is slowly altered, thermohaline ocean circulation models show either a smooth evolution of a mode of flow or an abrupt transition of temperature and salinity fields from one mode to another. An abrupt transition might occur at one value or over a range of the driving parameter. The latter has hysteresis because the mode in this range depends on the history of the driving parameter. Although assorted ocean circulation models exhibit abrupt transitions, such transitions have not been directly observed in the ocean. Therefore, laboratory experiments have been conducted to seek and observe actual (physical) abrupt thermohaline transitions. An experiment closely duplicating Stommel’s box model possessed abrupt transitions in temperature and salinity with distinct hysteresis. Two subsequent experiments with more latitude for internal circulation in the containers possessed abrupt transitions over a much smaller range of hysteresis. Therefore, a new experiment with even more latitude for internal circulation was designed and conducted. A large tank of constantly renewed freshwater at room temperature had a smaller cavity in the bottom heated from below with saltwater steadily pumped in. The cavity had either a salt mode, consisting of the cavity filled with heated salty water with an interface at the cavity top, or a temperature mode, in which the heat and saltwater were removed from the cavity by convection. There was no measurable hysteresis between the two modes. Possible reasons for such small hysteresis are discussed.
    Description: Support is gratefully acknowledged from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Climate Change Institute, the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography Section under Grant OCE-0081179, and the Paul M. Fye Chair of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
    Keywords: Thermohaline circulation ; Experimental design ; Ocean circulation ; Temperature ; Salinity
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 72
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. 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 39 (2009): 387-403, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3934.1.
    Description: Marginal sea overflows and the overlying upper ocean are coupled in the vertical by two distinct mechanisms—by an interfacial mass flux from the upper ocean to the overflow layer that accompanies entrainment and by a divergent eddy flux associated with baroclinic instability. Because both mechanisms tend to be localized in space, the resulting upper ocean circulation can be characterized as a β plume for which the relevant background potential vorticity is set by the slope of the topography, that is, a topographic β plume. The entrainment-driven topographic β plume consists of a single gyre that is aligned along isobaths. The circulation is cyclonic within the upper ocean (water columns are stretched). The transport within one branch of the topographic β plume may exceed the entrainment flux by a factor of 2 or more. Overflows are likely to be baroclinically unstable, especially near the strait. This creates eddy variability in both the upper ocean and overflow layers and a flux of momentum and energy in the vertical. In the time mean, the eddies accompanying baroclinic instability set up a double-gyre circulation in the upper ocean, an eddy-driven topographic β plume. In regions where baroclinic instability is growing, the momentum flux from the overflow into the upper ocean acts as a drag on the overflow and causes the overflow to descend the slope at a steeper angle than what would arise from bottom friction alone. Numerical model experiments suggest that the Faroe Bank Channel overflow should be the most prominent example of an eddy-driven topographic β plume and that the resulting upper-layer transport should be comparable to that of the overflow. The overflow-layer eddies that accompany baroclinic instability are analogous to those observed in moored array data. In contrast, the upper layer of the Mediterranean overflow is likely to be dominated more by an entrainment-driven topographic β plume. The difference arises because entrainment occurs at a much shallower location for the Mediterranean case and the background potential vorticity gradient of the upper ocean is much larger.
    Description: SK’s support during the time of his Ph.D. research in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program was provided by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE04-24741. JP and JY have also received support from the Climate Process Team on Gravity Current Entrainment, NSF Grant OCE-0611530. JY has also been supported by NSF Grant OCE-0351055.
    Keywords: Baroclinic flows ; Mass fluxes/transport ; Entrainment ; Topographic effects ; Potential vorticity
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  • 73
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1496-1511, doi:10.1175/jpo3071.1.
    Description: Measurements collected in the York River estuary, Virginia, demonstrate the important impact that tidal and lateral asymmetries in turbulent mixing have on the tidally averaged residual circulation. A reduction in turbulent mixing during the ebb phase of the tide caused by tidal straining of the axial density gradient results in increased vertical velocity shear throughout the water column during the ebb tide. In the absence of significant lateral differences in turbulent mixing, the enhanced ebb-directed transport caused by tidal straining is balanced by a reduction in the net seaward-directed barotropic pressure gradient, resulting in laterally uniform two-layer residual flow. However, the channel–shoal morphology of many drowned river valley estuaries often leads to lateral gradients in turbulent mixing. Tidal straining may then lead to tidal asymmetries in turbulent mixing near the deeper channel while the neighboring shoals remain relatively well mixed. As a result, the largest lateral asymmetries in turbulent mixing occur at the end of the ebb tide when the channel is significantly more stratified than the shoals. The reduced friction at the end of ebb delays the onset of the flood tide, increasing the duration of ebb in the channel. Conversely, over the shoal regions where stratification is more inhibited by tidal mixing, there is greater friction and the transition from ebb to flood occurs more rapidly. The resulting residual circulation is seaward over the channel and landward over the shoal. The shoal–channel segregation of this barotropically induced estuarine residual flow is opposite to that typically associated with baroclinic estuarine circulation over channel–shoal bathymetry.
    Description: Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences Grant OCE- 9984941.
    Keywords: Tides ; Ocean circulation ; Estuaries ; Turbulence
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  • 74
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 2207-2227, doi:10.1175/jpo3178.1.
    Description: The overturning and horizontal circulations of the Labrador Sea are deduced from a composite vertical section across the basin. The data come from the late-spring/early-summer occupations of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) AR7W line, during the years 1990–97. This time period was chosen because it corresponded to intense wintertime convection—the deepest and densest in the historical record—suggesting that the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) would be maximally impacted. The composite geostrophic velocity section was referenced using a mean lateral velocity profile from float data and then subsequently adjusted to balance mass. The analysis was done in depth space to determine the net sinking that results from convection and in density space to determine the diapycnal mass flux (i.e., the transformation of light water to Labrador Sea Water). The mean overturning cell is calculated to be 1 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), as compared with a horizontal gyre of 18 Sv. The total water mass transformation is 2 Sv. These values are consistent with recent modeling results. The diagnosed heat flux of 37.6 TW is found to result predominantly from the horizontal circulation, both in depth space and density space. These results suggest that the North Atlantic MOC is not largely impacted by deep convection in the Labrador Sea.
    Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation through Grants OCE-0450658 (RP) and OCE-024978 (MS).
    Keywords: Convection ; Ocean circulation ; North Atlantic
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  • 75
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1998
    Description: The evolution of a coastal ocean undergoing uniform surface heat loss is examined. The dynamics of this ocean are initially modulated by the intense vertical mixing driven by surface cooling. The strong vertical mixing prevents the formation of geostrophic flows and inhibits the cross-shelf flux of heat. The vertical mixing is eventually suppressed by the advective transport of cold, dense water offshore. Once this happens, alongshore geostrophic flows form, and become baroclinically unstable. The surface heat flux is then balanced by a cross-shelf eddy heat flux. Scales are found for the cross-shelf density gradient which results from this balance. Solutions for linear internal waves are found for a wedge-shaped bathymetry with bottom friction. Bottom friction is capable of entirely dissipating the waves before they reach the coast, and waves traveling obliquely offshore are reflected back to the coast from a caustic. The internal wave climate near two moorings of the Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment observation program is analyzed. The high frequency internal wave energy levels were elevated above the Garrett and Munk spectrum, and the spectrum becomes less red as one moves to the shore. The wave field is dominated by vertical-mode one waves, and internal wave energy propagates shoreward.
    Description: This work was funded by an Office of Naval Research fellowship and and Office of Naval Research AASERT fellowship, N00014-95:-1-0746.
    Keywords: Internal waves ; Oceanic mixing ; Ocean circulation
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    Type: Thesis
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  • 76
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 January 1988
    Description: This study focuses on the zonal weakening, eastern termination and seasonal variations of the Atlantic equatorial undercurrent (EUC). The main and most original contribution of the dissertation is a detailed analysis of the Atlantic EUC simulated by Philander and Pacanowski's (1986) general circulation model (GCM), which provides a novel description of the dynamical regimes governing various regions of a nonlinear stratified undercurrent. Only in a narrow deep western region of the simulation does one find an approximately inertial regime corresponding to zonal acceleration. Elsewhere frictional processes cannot be ignored. The bulk of the mid-basin model EUC terminates in the overlying westward surface flow while only a small fraction (the deeper more inertial layers) terminates at the eastern coast. In agreement with observations, a robust feature of the GCM not present in simpler models is the apparent migration of the EUC core from above the thermocline in the west to below it in the east. In the GCM, this happens because the eastward flow is eroded more efficiently by vertical friction above the base of the thermocline than by lateral friction at greater depths. This mechanism is a plausible one for the observed EUC. A scale analysis using a depth scale which decreases with distance eastwards predicts the model zonal transition between western inertial and eastern inertio-frictional regimes. Historical and recent observations and simple models of the equatorial and coastal eastern undercurrents are reviewed, and a new analysis of current measurements in the eastern equatorial Atlantic is presented. Although the measurements are inadequate for definitive conclusions, they suggest that Lukas' (1981) claim of a spring surge of the Pacific EUC to the eastern coast and a seasonal branching of the EUC into a coastal southeastward undercurrent may also hold for the Atlantic Ocean. To improve the agreement between observed and modelled strength of the eastern undercurrent, it is suggested that the eddy coefficient of horizontal mixing should be reduced in future GCM simulations.
    Description: This work was supported by NSF grants OCE82-14771, OCE82-08744 and OCE85-14885.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Thermoclines ; Ocean circulation
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  • 77
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 1998
    Description: The steady states of two models of the double-gyre wind-driven ocean circulation are studied. The link between the steady state solutions of the models and their time-mean and low-frequency variability is explored to test the hypothesis that both stable and unstable fixed points influence shape the model's attractor in phase space. The steady state solutions of a barotropic double-gyre ocean model in which the wind-stress curl input of vorticity is balanced primarily by bottom friction are studied. The bifurcations away from a unique and stable steady state are mapped as a function of two nondimensional parameters, (δI,δS), which can be thought of as measuring respectively the relative importance of the nonlinear advection and bottom damping of relative vorticity to the advection of planetary vorticity. A highly inertial branch characterized by a circulation with transports far in excess of those predicted by Sverdrup balance is present over a wide range of parameters including regions of parameter space where other solutions give more realistic flows. For the range of parameters investigated, in the limit of large Reynolds number, δI,δS → ∞, the inertial branch is stable and appears to be unique. This branch is anti-symmetric with respect to the mid-basin latitude like the prescribed wind-stress curl. For intermediate values of δI,δS, additional pairs of mirror image non-symmetric equilibria come into existence. These additional equilibria have currents which redistribute relative vorticity across the line of zero wind-stress curl. This internal redist~ibution of vorticity prevents the solution from developing the large transports that are necessary for the anti-symmetric solution to achieve a global vorticity balance. Beyond some critical Reynolds number, the nonsymmetric solutions are unstable to time-dependent perturbations. Time-averaged solutions in' this parameter regime have transports comparable in magnitude to those of the non-symmetric steady state branch. Beyond a turning point, where the non-symmetric steady state solutions cease to exist, all the computed time-dependent model trajectories converge to the anti-symmetric inertial runaway solution. The internal compensation mechanism which acts through explicitly simulated eddies is itself dependent explicit dissipation parameter. Using the reduced-gravity quasigeostrophic model an investigation of the link between the steady state solutions and the model's low-frequency variability is conducted. If the wind-stress curl is kept anti-symmetric, successive pairs of non-symmetric equilibria come into existence via symmetry-breaking pitchfork bifurcations as the model's biharmonic viscosity is reduced. Succesive pairs of mirror image equilibria have an additional half meander in the jet. The distinct energy levels of the steady state solutiOris can be understood in part by there different inter-gyre fluxes of vorticity. Those solutions with weak inter-gyre fluxes of vorticity have large and energetic recirculation cells which remove excess vorticity through bottom friction. Those solutions with strong inter-gyre fluxes of vorticity have much smaller and ·less energetic recirculation cells. A significant fraction of the variance (30%) of the interface height anomaly can be accounted by four coherent structures which point away from the time-mean state and towards four steady state solutions in phase space. After removing the variance which projects onto the four modes, the remaining variance is reduced predominantly at low-frequencies, showing that these modes are linked to the low-frequency variability of the model. Furthermore, the time-averaged flow fields within distinct energy ranges show distinct patterns which are in turn similar to the distinct steady state solutions.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Fluid mechanics ; Bifurcation theory
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  • 78
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 August 1998
    Description: Double-diffusive processes are studied and parameterized, and their impacts on the oceanic thermohaline circulation are investigated by single-hemisphere numerical models and scaling analysis. Scaling analysis on the thermohaline circulation has been done under three types of surface boundary conditions. (a) Under "relaxation" conditions, there is a two-thirds power law dependence of the meridional overturning rate (and the poleward heat transport) on the diapycnal diffusivity. For any given external forcing, there is only one equilibrium state for the thermohaline circulation. (b) Under "flux" boundary conditions, there is a half power law dependence of the meridional overturning rate on the diapycnal diffusivity. Only one mode is possible for given external forcing. (c) Under "mixed" boundary conditions, multiple equilibria become possible. For given thermal forcing, the existence of multiple equilibria depends on the relative contributions of diapycnal diffusivity and the hydrologic forcing. Numerical experiments are implemented to test the above scaling arguments. Consistent results have been obtained under the above three types of boundary conditions. These provide a basis for understanding how the thermohaline circulation depends on the diapycnal diffusivity, which we know is influenced by the double-diffusive processes of "salt fingering" and "diffusive layering" in some parts of the ocean. In order to examine this issue, the double-diffusive processes are parameterized by diapycnal eddy diffusivities for heat and salt that are different and depend on the local density ratio, Rp= αTz/βSz. A background diffusivity is applied to represent turbulent mixing in the stratified environment. The implementation of this double-diffusive - parameterization in numerical models has significant impacts on the thermohaline circulation. (a) Under "relaxation" boundary conditions, the meridional overturning rate and the poleward heat transport are reduced, and water mass properties are also changed. Similar results are obtained under "flux" boundary conditions. (b) Under "mixed" boundary conditions, the critical freshwater flux for the existence of the thermal mode becomes smaller with the double-diffusive parameterization. The extent to which the thermohaline circulation is affected by double-diffusive processes depends on the magnitude of the freshwater forcing.
    Description: This thesis is supported by a grant from the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation, OCE94-155S9.
    Keywords: Thermoclines ; Ocean circulation
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  • 79
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 855–868, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-10-05010.1.
    Description: Data from the Hudson River estuary demonstrate that the tidal variations in vertical salinity stratification are not consistent with the patterns associated with along-channel tidal straining. These observations result from three additional processes not accounted for in the traditional tidal straining model: 1) along-channel and 2) lateral advection of horizontal gradients in the vertical salinity gradient and 3) tidal asymmetries in the strength of vertical mixing. As a result, cross-sectionally averaged values of the vertical salinity gradient are shown to increase during the flood tide and decrease during the ebb. Only over a limited portion of the cross section does the observed stratification increase during the ebb and decrease during the flood. These observations highlight the three-dimensional nature of estuarine flows and demonstrate that lateral circulation provides an alternate mechanism that allows for the exchange of materials between surface and bottom waters, even when direct turbulent mixing through the pycnocline is prohibited by strong stratification.
    Description: The funding for this research was obtained from NSF Grant OCE-08-25226.
    Description: 2012-11-01
    Keywords: Mixing ; Ocean circulation ; Shear structure/flows ; Transport ; Turbulence
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  • 80
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1989
    Description: Eighteen months of sea surface height data from the GEOSAT altimeter along collinear subtracks were analyzed for information on the circulation pattern in the Bering Sea. Seventy subtracks from both ascending and descending orbits, with as many as 35 repeat cycles along each subtrack, were analyzed. Orbit errors were removed from the height data using a least-squares fit to a cubic polynomial, weighted by the inverse of the height variance. Addition of the weights decreased contamination of residual height profiles by the large geoid signal. Composite maps of variability along each track revealed patterns of increased variability in the regions of the documented Bering slope current (BSC) and the proposed western boundary current (WBC); however, no evidence was found of the expected bifurcation of the BSC near the Siberian coast. Past observations of tides in the Bering Sea were reviewed along with a local tide model to detect tidal contributions to the mesoscale sea surface height variability. The tidal analysis suggested that residual tides contributed primarily to the longer wavelengths which were removed in the collinear processing. Examination of the Schwiderski tidal correction proved it to be a sensible correction, reducing the height variance by approximately 60%. Finally, using a Gaussian model for the BSC velocity profile, synthetic residual heights were generated and fit to the actual data to produce estimates of absolute surface geostrophic velocity and transport. Comparisons of mean flow, height fluctuations and seasonal trends across the BSC, the WBC and Bering Strait support the hypothesis that the BSC turns north at Cape Navarin into the WBC which, in turn, is capable of supplying a major part of the transport through the Bering Strait.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Collineation
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  • 81
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1993
    Description: Travel time perturbations of adiabatic normal modes due to an internal tide and internal mode field in the Barents Sea are examined. A formalism for the travel time perturbation due to a change in sound speed is presented. Internal tide and internal wave amplitude spectra are calculated from Brancker temperature loggers which were deployed on moorings in the Barents Sea during the August 1992 Barents Sea Polar Front Experiment. In particular, the first three internal wave mode amplitudes are estimated from the four Brancker temperature loggers on the southwest mooring of the array. Modal perturbations in acoustic pulse travel time and the travel time covariance are calculated and compared for consistency to a simple ray model. These perturbations are small for the modal arrivals that the vertical acoustic array which was deployed is expected to resolve. The third internal wave mode has the largest impact on the acoustic arrivals, per unit amplitude, but the first internal wave mode dominates the scattering due to having a much larger amplitude overall.
    Keywords: Internal waves ; Ocean circulation ; Acoustic surface waves
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  • 82
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2012
    Description: This thesis focuses on ocean circulation and atmospheric forcing in the Atlantic Ocean at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 18-21 thousand years before present). Relative to the pre-industrial climate, LGM atmospheric CO2 concentrations were about 90 ppm lower, ice sheets were much more extensive, and many regions experienced significantly colder temperatures. In this thesis a novel approach to dynamical reconstruction is applied to make estimates of LGM Atlantic Ocean state that are consistent with these proxy records and with known ocean dynamics. Ocean dynamics are described with the MIT General Circulation Model in an Atlantic configuration extending from 35°S to 75°N at 1° resolution. Six LGM proxy types are used to constrain the model: four compilations of near sea surface temperatures from the MARGO project, as well as benthic isotope records of δ18O and δ13C compiled byMarchal and Curry; 629 individual proxy records are used. To improve the fit of the model to the data, a least-squares fit is computed using an algorithm based on the model adjoint (the Lagrange multiplier methodology). The adjoint is used to compute improvements to uncertain initial and boundary conditions (the control variables). As compared to previous model-data syntheses of LGM ocean state, this thesis uses a significantly more realistic model of oceanic physics, and is the first to incorporate such a large number and diversity of proxy records. A major finding is that it is possible to find an ocean state that is consistent with all six LGM proxy compilations and with known ocean dynamics, given reasonable uncertainty estimates. Only relatively modest shifts from modern atmospheric forcing are required to fit the LGM data. The estimates presented herein successfully reproduce regional shifts in conditions at the LGM that have been inferred from proxy records, but which have not been captured in the best available LGM coupled model simulations. In addition, LGM benthic δ18O and δ13C records are shown to be consistent with a shallow but robust Atlantic meridional overturning cell, although other circulations cannot be excluded.
    Description: Primary support was provided by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and two National Science Foundation awards: Award #OCE-0645936: “Beyond the Instrumental Record: the Case of Circulation at the Last Glacial Maximum” and Award #OCE-1060735: “Collaborative Research: Beyond the Instrumental Record - the Ocean Circulation at the Last Glacial Maximum and the de-Glacial Sequence”. Important secondary support came from the National Ocean Partnership Program and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration via the ECCO effort at MIT.
    Keywords: Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Ocean circulation
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  • 83
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1994
    Description: Ocean modellers seek to understand the circulation of the oceans, or portions thereof, by developing models of the ocean they can solve. This tractability constraint forces ocean modellers to make choices. Naturally, they hope to make intelligent choices, but whenever a new model is being developed or an existing one extended, the issue of tractability lurks. The large-scale, basin-wide, circulation of the oceans can be divided into two components, classified by their driving force. The wind-driven circulation, whose flow occurs mainly above the thermocline, was first explained qualitatively by Stommel (1948) with a simple, elegant analytical model. The other component of the oceans' circulation, the density-driven, or thermohaline circulation, flows below the thermocline. Again, the first simple analytical model for the deep thermohaline flow was proposed by Stommel (1958) and developed by Stommel and Aarons (1959) whose basic ideas underlie even the most recent conceptual models of the large-scale circulation. The details of the thermohaline circulation and its interaction with the wind-driven circulation in a realistic ocean basin is a problem which is not tractable analytically. This has driven ocean modellers interested in this aspect of the oceans' circulation to numerical models: ocean circulation models.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation
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  • 84
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 1994
    Description: This work investigates whether large-scale coherent vortex structures driven by wave-current interaction (Langmuir circulation) are responsible for maintaining the oceanic mixed layer. Langmuir circulations dominate the near-surface vertical transport of momentum and density when the characteristic scale for forcing (defined as the Craik-Leibovich instability parameter γCLS) is stronger than the characteristic scale for diffusive decay γdiff. Since the wave-current forcing is concentrated near the surface both terms depend on the cell geometry. Cells with long wavelengths penetrate more deeply into the water column. These cells grow more slowly than the fastest growing mode for most cases, but always dominate the solution in the absence of Coriolis forces. In the presence of Coriolis forces, the horizontal wavelength and thus the depth of penetration are limited. When a cell geometry is found such that γCLS » γdiff, the current profile produced by small-scale diffusion is unstable to Langmuir cells and the cells replace small-scale diffusion as the dominant vertical transport mechanism for momentum and density. The perturbation crosscell shear is predicted to scale as γCLS. Such a scaling is observed during two field experiments. The observed velocity profile during these experiments is more sheared than predicted by a model which implicitly assumes instantaneous mixing by large eddies, but less sheared than predicted by a model which assumes small-scale mixing by near-isotropic turbulence. The latter profile is unstable to Langmuir cells when waves are present. The inclusion of cells driven by wave-current interaction explains the failure of the mixed layer to restratify on two days with high waves and low wind. Wave-current interaction introduces a small but efficient source of energy for transporting density which goes as the surface stress times the Stokes drift.
    Description: The Office of Naval Research supported me throughout graduate school, first as an ONR Graduate Fellow. and later as a research assistant under the Surface Waves Processes Program (ONR Grant N00014-90-J-1495).
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Oceanic mixing ; Acania (Ship) Cruise ; Wecoma (Ship) Cruise W
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  • 85
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 December 1996
    Description: The transformation of potential vorticity within and stability of nonlinear deep western boundary currents in an idealized tropical ocean are studied using a shallowwater model. Observational evidence indicates that the potential vorticity of fluid parcels in deep western boundary currents must change sign as they cross the equator, but this evidence is otherwise unable to clarify the process. A series of numerical experiments investigate this transformation in a rectangular basin straddling the equator. A mass source located in the northwestern corner feeds fluid into the domain where it is constrained to cross the equator to reach a distributed mass sink. Dissipation is included as momentum diffusion. The Reynolds number, defined as the ratio of the mass source per unit depth to the viscosity, determines the nature of the flow, and a critical value, Rec, divides its possible behavior into two regimes. For Re 〈 Rec, the flow is laminar and well described by linear theory. For Re just above the critical value, the flow is time-dependent, with cyclonic eddies forming in the western boundary current near the equator. For still larger Reynolds number, eddies of both signs emerge and form a complicated, interacting network that extends into the basin several deformation radii from the western boundary, as well as north and south of the equator. The eddy field is established as the mechanism for potential vorticity transformation in nonlinear cross-equatorial flow. The analysis of vorticity fluxes follows from the flux-conservative form of the absolute vorticity equation. It is shown that the zonally integrated meridional flux of vorticity across the equator using no slip boundary conditions is virtually zero even in the strongly nonlinear limit suggesting that the eddies are extremely efficient vorticity transfer agents. A decomposition of the vorticity fluxes into components due to mean advection, eddy transport, and friction, reveals the growth with Reynolds number of a turbulent boundary layer that exchanges vorticity between the inertial portion of the boundary current and a frictional sub-layer where modification is straightforward. A linear stability analysis of the shallow-water system in the tropical ocean examines the initial formation of the eddy field. The formulation assumes that the basic state is purely meridional and on a local f-plane. Realistic western boundary current profiles undergo a horizontal shear instability that is partially stabilized by viscosity. Calculations at several latitudes indicate that the instability is enhanced in the tropics where the internal deformation radius is a maximum. The linear stability analysis predicts a length scale of the disturbance, a location for its origin, and a critical Reynolds number that agree well with numerical results.
    Description: Financial support for this research was provided by NSF grant number OCE- 9115915 and ONR ASSERT grant number N00014-94-1-0844.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Ocean circulation
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  • 86
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 2283–2296, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-0227.1.
    Description: The dynamic influence of thermohaline circulation on wind-driven circulation in the South China Sea (SCS) is studied using a simple reduced gravity model, in which the upwelling driven by mixing in the abyssal ocean is treated in terms of an upward pumping distributed at the base of the upper layer. Because of the strong upwelling of deep water, the cyclonic gyre in the northern SCS is weakened, but the anticyclonic gyre in the southern SCS is intensified in summer, while cyclonic gyres in both the southern and northern SCS are weakened in winter. For all seasons, the dynamic influence of thermohaline circulation on wind-driven circulation is larger in the northern SCS than in the southern SCS. Analysis suggests that the upwelling associated with the thermohaline circulation in the deep ocean plays a crucial role in regulating the wind-driven circulation in the upper ocean.
    Description: G. Wang is supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC Grants 41125019, 40725017, and 40976017).D.Chen is supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology (2010DFA21012), the State Oceanic Administration (201105018), and the NSFC (91128204).
    Description: 2013-06-01
    Keywords: Abyssal circulation ; Dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Upwelling/downwelling
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  • 87
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1996
    Description: The water mass distribution in the southwestern Barents Sea, the thermohaline structure of the western Barents Sea Polar Front, and the formation of local water masses are described based on an analysis of historical hydrographic data and a recent process-oriented field experiment. This study concentrated on the frontal region between Bj0rn0ya and Hopen Island where Arctic water is found on the Spitzbergen Bank and Atlantic Water in the Bear Island Trough and Hopen Trench. Distributions of Atlantic, Arctic, and Polar Front waters are consistent with topographic control of Atlantic water circulation. Seasonal buoyancy forcing disrupts the topographic control in the surface layer, altering the frontal structure, and affecting local water mass formation. In the winter, the topographic control is firmly established and both sides of the front are vertically well-mixed. Winter cooling creates sea-ice over Spitzbergen Bank and convectively formed Modified Atlantic Water in the Bear Island Trough and Hopen Trench. In the summer, heating melts the sea-ice, producing a surface meltwater pool that can cross the polar front, disrupting topographic control and substantially increasing the vertical thermohaline gradients in the frontal region. The meltwater pool produces the largest geostrophic shear in the region.
    Description: Support for this work was provided by a Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and Office of Naval Research grant N00014- 90-J-1359.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Oceanic mixing ; Climatic changes
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  • 88
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    American Meteorological Society
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 43 (2013): 1398–1406, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-13-028.1.
    Description: An adiabatic, inertial, and quasigeostrophic model is used to discuss the interaction of surface Ekman transport with an island. The theory extends the recent work of Spall and Pedlosky to include an analytical and nonlinear model for the interaction. The presence of an island that interrupts a uniform Ekman layer transport raises interesting questions about the resulting circulation. The consequential upwelling around the island can lead to a local intake of fluid from the geostrophic region beneath the Ekman layer or to a more complex flow around the island in which the fluid entering the Ekman layer on one portion of the island's perimeter is replaced by a flow along the island's boundary from a downwelling region located elsewhere on the island. This becomes especially pertinent when the flow is quasigeostrophic and adiabatic. The oncoming geostrophic flow that balances the offshore Ekman flux is largely diverted around the island, and the Ekman flux is fed by a transfer of fluid from the western to the eastern side of the island. As opposed to the linear, dissipative model described earlier, this transfer takes place even in the absence of a topographic skirt around the island. The principal effect of topography in the inertial model is to introduce an asymmetry between the circulation on the northern and southern sides of the island. The quasigeostrophic model allows a simple solution to the model problem with topography and yet the resulting three-dimensional circulation is surprisingly complex with streamlines connecting each side of the island.
    Description: This research was supported in part by NSF Grant OCE Grant 0925061.
    Keywords: Baroclinic flows ; Large-scale motions ; Nonlinear dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics ; Topographic effects
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  • 89
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015):1189–1204, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0122.1.
    Description: Winter outcropping of the Eighteen Degree Water (EDW) and its subsequent dispersion are studied using a ° eddy-resolving simulation of the Family of Linked Atlantic Modeling Experiments (FLAME). Outcropped EDW columns in the model simulations are detected in each winter from 1990 to 1999, and particles are deployed in the center of each outcropped EDW column. Subsequently, the trajectories of these particles are calculated for the following 5 yr. The particles slowly spread away from the outcropping region into the nonoutcropping/subducted EDW region south of ~30°N and eventually to the non-EDW region in the greater subtropical gyre. Approximately 30% of the particles are found in non-EDW waters 1 yr after deployment; after 5 yr, only 25% of the particles are found within EDW. The reoutcropping time is defined as the number of years between when a particle is originally deployed in an outcropping EDW column and when that particle is next found in an outcropping EDW column. Of the particles, 66% are found to reoutcrop as EDW in 1 yr, and less than 5% of the particles outcrop in each of the subsequent 4 yr. While the individual trajectories exhibit significant eddy-like motions, the time scale of reoutcropping is primarily set by the mean circulation. The dominance of reoutcropping in 1 yr suggests that EDW outcropping contributes considerably to the persistence of surface temperature anomalies from one winter to the next, that is, the reemergence of winter sea surface temperature anomalies.
    Description: We gratefully acknowledge the support from the NSF OCE Physical Oceanography program (NSF OCE-0961090 to Y-OK and J-JP; NSF OCE-0960776 to MSL and SFG; and NSF OCE-1242989 to Y-OK).
    Description: 2015-10-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Atm/Ocean Structure/ Phenomena ; Water masses
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  • 90
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 1410–1425, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0192.1.
    Description: The west-to-east crossover of boundary currents has been seen in mean circulation schemes from several past models of the Red Sea. This study investigates the mechanisms that produce and control the crossover in an idealized, eddy-resolving numerical model of the Red Sea. The authors also review the observational evidence and derive an analytical estimate for the crossover latitude. The surface buoyancy loss increases northward in the idealized model, and the resultant mean circulation consists of an anticyclonic gyre in the south and a cyclonic gyre in the north. In the midbasin, the northward surface flow crosses from the western boundary to the eastern boundary. Numerical experiments with different parameters indicate that the crossover latitude of the boundary currents changes with f0, β, and the meridional gradient of surface buoyancy forcing. In the analytical estimate, which is based on quasigeostrophic, β-plane dynamics, the crossover is predicted to lie at the latitude where the net potential vorticity advection (including an eddy component) is zero. Various terms in the potential vorticity budget can be estimated using a buoyancy budget, a thermal wind balance, and a parameterization of baroclinic instability.
    Description: This work is supported by Award USA 00002, KSA 00011, and KSA 00011/02 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), by National Science Foundation Grants OCE0927017, OCE1154641, and OCE85464100, and by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Academic Program Office.
    Description: 2015-11-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Boundary currents ; Buoyancy ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics
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  • 91
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 2806–2819, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0061.1.
    Description: An eastward-flowing current of a homogeneous fluid with velocity U, contained in a channel of width L, impinges on an island of width of O(L), and the resulting interaction and dynamics are studied for values of the supercriticality parameter, b = βL2/U, both larger and smaller than π2. The former case is subcritical with respect to Rossby waves, and the latter is supercritical. The nature of the flow field depends strongly on b, and in particular, the nature of the flow around the island and the proportion of the flow passing to the north or south of the island are sensitive to b and to the position of the island in the channel. The problem is studied analytically in a relatively simple, nonlinear quasigeostrophic and adiabatic framework and numerically with a shallow-water model that allows a qualitative extension of the results to the equator. Although the issues involved are motivated by the interaction of the Equatorial Undercurrent and the Galapagos Islands, the analysis presented here focuses on the fundamental issue of the distinctive nature of the flow as a function of Rossby wave criticality.
    Description: Supported by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE-0959381.
    Description: 2016-05-01
    Keywords: Circulation/ Dynamics ; Ocean circulation ; Ocean dynamics ; Waves, oceanic
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  • 92
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 45 (2015): 2773–2789, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0031.1.
    Description: Tidal oscillatory salt transport, induced by the correlation between tidal variations in salinity and velocity, is an important term for the subtidal salt balance under the commonly used Eulerian method of salt transport decomposition. In this paper, its mechanisms in a partially stratified estuary are investigated with a numerical model of the Hudson estuary. During neap tides, when the estuary is strongly stratified, the tidal oscillatory salt transport is mainly due to the hydraulic response of the halocline to the longitudinal variation of topography. This mechanism does not involve vertical mixing, so it should not be regarded as oscillatory shear dispersion, but instead it should be regarded as advective transport of salt, which results from the vertical distortion of exchange flow obtained in the Eulerian decomposition by vertical fluctuations of the halocline. During spring tides, the estuary is weakly stratified, and vertical mixing plays a significant role in the tidal variation of salinity. In the spring tide regime, the tidal oscillatory salt transport is mainly due to oscillatory shear dispersion. In addition, the transient lateral circulation near large channel curvature causes the transverse tilt of the halocline. This mechanism has little effect on the cross-sectionally integrated tidal oscillatory salt transport, but it results in an apparent left–right cross-channel asymmetry of tidal oscillatory salt transport. With the isohaline framework, tidal oscillatory salt transport can be regarded as a part of the net estuarine salt transport, and the Lagrangian advective mechanism and dispersive mechanism can be distinguished.
    Description: Tao Wang was supported by the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (Grant SKLEC-KF201509) and Chinese Scholarship Council. Geyer was supported by by NSF Grant OCE 0926427. Wensheng Jiang was supported by NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers (Grant U1406401).
    Description: 2016-05-01
    Keywords: Geographic location/entity ; Estuaries ; Circulation/ Dynamics ; Baroclinic flows ; Dispersion ; Shear structure/flows ; Atm/Ocean Structure/ Phenomena ; Diapycnal mixing ; Models and modeling ; Regional models
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  • 93
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2016
    Description: Since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~ 20,000 years ago) air temperatures warmed, sea level rose roughly 130 meters, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased. This thesis combines global models and paleoceanographic observations to constrain the ocean’s role in storing and transporting heat, salt, and other tracers during this time, with implications for understanding how the modern ocean works and how it might change in the future. • By combining a kinematic ocean model with “upstream” and “downstream” deglacial oxygen isotope time series from benthic and planktonic foraminifera, I show that the data are in agreement with the modern circulation, quantify their power to infer circulation changes, and propose new data locations. • An ocean general circulation model (the MITgcm) constrained to fit LGM sea surface temperature proxy observations reveals colder ocean temperatures, greater sea ice extent, and changes in ocean mixed layer depth, and suggests that some features in the data are not robust. • A sensitivity analysis in the MITgcm demonstrates that changes in winds or in ocean turbulent transport can explain the hypothesis that the boundary between deep Atlantic waters originating from Northern and Southern Hemispheres was shallower at the LGM than it is today.
    Description: Support for this work came from an MIT Presidential Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and grants NASA NNX12AJ93G – Gravity data for ocean circulation and climate studies, NSF OCE-0961713 – Collaborative Research: The Physics and Statistics of Global Sea Level Change, NSF OCE-1060735 – Collaborative Research: Beyond the Instrumental Record - the Ocean Circulation at the last Glacial maximum and the deglacial sequence, and NASA NNX08AR33G – Application of Satellite Altimetry Gravity Winds and in Situ Data to Problems of the Ocean Circulation.
    Keywords: Global warming ; Ocean circulation
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  • 94
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. 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 33(9), (2020): 3845-3862, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0215.1.
    Description: The latitudinal structure of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability in the North Atlantic is investigated using numerical results from three ocean circulation simulations over the past four to five decades. We show that AMOC variability south of the Labrador Sea (53°N) to 25°N can be decomposed into a latitudinally coherent component and a gyre-opposing component. The latitudinally coherent component contains both decadal and interannual variabilities. The coherent decadal AMOC variability originates in the subpolar region and is reflected by the zonal density gradient in that basin. It is further shown to be linked to persistent North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) conditions in all three models. The interannual AMOC variability contained in the latitudinally coherent component is shown to be driven by westerlies in the transition region between the subpolar and the subtropical gyre (40°–50°N), through significant responses in Ekman transport. Finally, the gyre-opposing component principally varies on interannual time scales and responds to local wind variability related to the annual NAO. The contribution of these components to the total AMOC variability is latitude-dependent: 1) in the subpolar region, all models show that the latitudinally coherent component dominates AMOC variability on interannual to decadal time scales, with little contribution from the gyre-opposing component, and 2) in the subtropical region, the gyre-opposing component explains a majority of the interannual AMOC variability in two models, while in the other model, the contributions from the coherent and the gyre-opposing components are comparable. These results provide a quantitative decomposition of AMOC variability across latitudes and shed light on the linkage between different AMOC variability components and atmospheric forcing mechanisms.
    Description: The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (Awards OCE-1756143 and OCE-1537136) and the Climate Program Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Award NA15OAR4310088). Gratitude is extended to Claus Böning and Arne Biastoch who shared ORCA025 output. S. Zou thanks F. Li, M. Buckley, and L. Li for helpful discussions. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.
    Keywords: Deep convection ; Ocean circulation ; Thermocline circulation
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  • 95
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 April 1977
    Description: A 37 day long field program was carried out in March 1974 on the New England continental shelf break to study the current and hydrographic structure and variability on the shelf and in the shelf/slope front. A second experiment was conducted in the shelf break region for one week in January 1975 to study frontal exchange processes. The mean currents during the March 1974 experiment all had a westward alongshore component, increasing in magnitude progressing offshore from ~5 cm/sec to a maximum at the nearshore edge of the shelf/slope front of between 10 and 20 cm/ sec, and decreasing in magnitude with depth. The current structure was such that the velocity vector rotated clockwise with depth in the shelf waters inside the front. The mean alongshore transport of shelf water was on the order of 0.4 Sverdrups through a cross-shelf transect south of Block Island. About 30% of the transport occurred in the wedge-shaped region offshore of the 100 m isobath and inshore of the front. Comparison of the observed mean currents with those predicted by the steady frictional boundary layer model of Csanady (1976) indicates that the model captures most of the essential features of the shelf circulation. The low frequency currents contain approximately 30% of the total current variance. An empirical orthogonal modal analysis indicates that for low frequency alongshore motions the whole shelf together with the water above the front moves as a unit and that the on- offshore currents are characterized by opposing flows at surface and bottom. The alongshore wind stress component is the dominant forcing term for these low frequency motions and for the subsurface pressure field as well. For motion with periods longer than 33 hours, the time derivative term in the cross-shelf momentum balance is comparable with the Coriolis term while the advective terms are 2 to 10 times smaller, on the average. The semi-diurnal tide is barotropic over the shelf with current magnitudes that increase almost by a factor of two between the shelf break and the inshore mooring 70 km shoreward. At the shelf break one-dimensional continuity gives the correct relation between the surface tide and the semi-diurnal currents. The semi-diurnal tide is clockwise polarized. The diurnal tide is baroclinic, increasing somewhat toward the bottom, is less clockwise polarized than the semi-diurnal, and has tidal ellipses aligned with the isobaths. The diurnal tidal energy decreases toward shore. Inertial energy in the frontal zone is equal to the semi-diurnal tidal energy near the surface. The inertial energy decreases with depth and is an order of magnitude smaller further on the shelf. The inertial oscillations are shown to be highly correlated with the wind stress record, arising and decaying on a time scale of 3 to 4 days. The inertial oscillations are shown to be preferentially forced by wind stress events that have a large amount of clockwise energy at near inertial periods. The frontal zone is shown to be in near geostrophic balance with an anticipated vertical shear across the front of the order of 5 to 8 cm/sec. Thus, there is a wedge-shaped region of velocity deficit that is confined directly under the front and above ~200 m. Outside of this region the velocity is alongshore to the west. Low frequency motion of the front is shown to exist on time scales from 3 to 10 days although the complete nature of the motions is not known. An oscillation of the front about its mid-depth position at periods of 3 1/2 to 4 days was caused initially by an eastward wind stress event forcing the front offshore near surface and onshore along the bottom. This was accompanied by large temperature oscillations near the bottom at midshelf and current oscillations confined to those current meters near the front. The internal wave band is most energetic in the center of the front, is about half as energetic above the front where it is subject to variations associated with the wind stress, and is smaller and nearly constant below the front. The internal wave energy decreases shoreward reflecting the decreasing stratification shoreward of the wintertime hydrography. Linear internal wave theory seems to break down in the conditions of the frontal zone. A stability analysis of the front to small perturbations is carried out by extending the model of Margules frontal stability of Orlanski (1968) to include the steep bottom topography of the shelf break region. The study covers the parameter range pertinent to the New England continental shelf break region and indicates that the front is indeed unstable; however, the associated growth rates are so slow that baroclinic instability does not seem to be a viable explanation for the observed frontal motions. Application of the theory to the nearly flat topography of the shelf itself shows that the front would be at least 20 times more unstable there suggesting that the front would migrate offshore to the shelf break region until a stable equilibrium was established between frictional dissipation and the instabilities.
    Description: Funds for 'the field program and the data analysis of the New England Shelf Dynamics Experiment have been provided by the National Science Foundation through grants GA-4l075 and DES 74-03001.
    Keywords: Ocean currents ; Continental shelf ; Fronts ; Ocean circulation ; Dallas (Ship) Cruise ; A.E. Verrill (Ship) Cruise
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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  • 96
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 May 1982
    Description: Velocity and temperature time series from Hudson Submarine Canyon and hydrographic surveys of seven canyons of the Middle Atlantic Bight indicate that the effects of storms, tides, and incoming internal waves are intensified in submarine canyons. Storms with strong eastward and westward wind stress were found to cause strong upwelling and downwelling through the upper layers of Hudson Canyon. Storm-forced upwelling also caused strong down-canyon flows at the canyon floor. Internal waves were found to be concentrated in the canyon head and near the floor, in agreement with theoretical predictions. Slope water apparently circulates slowly through the outer part of the canyon and is mixed in near-floor layers which could be caused by breaking internal waves. Internal tides are generated at the floor in the central part of the canyon. Oscillations at tidal frequencies dominate the near-floor velocity field below the thermocline, and are accompanied by high-frequency spikes that may be nonlinear interface waves propagating on the top of the bottom mixed layer. A numerical model was used to calculate mixing in the canyon's bottom boundary layer caused by an unstable density gradient during flood tide. Energetic internal wave activity is apparently responsible for sediment sorting in the canyon head; the internal waves become more energetic as the sediment grain size increases. Below the thermocline, the tidal oscillations vary in amplitude with the phases of the moon; the observed deposition of mud can easily occur during weeks of low velocity.
    Description: Foundation graduate fellowship and by the Office of Naval Research under Contracts N00014-75-C-029l and N00014-80-C-0273.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Submarine valleys ; Internal waves ; Sediment transport ; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC34
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  • 97
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2007
    Description: Observations of current velocity, temperature, salinity and pressure from a 2-year moored array deployment and four hydrographic cruises conducted by the United States Southern Ocean GLOBEC program on the western Antarctic Peninsula continental shelf are used to characterize the ocean circulation and its connection to fresh water and heat fluxes on the shelf. Mean velocities on the shelf are of the order of 5 cm/s or less. Tidal motions are dominated by the M2 and S2 semi-diurnal tides and the O1 and K1 diurnal tides, although the tidal velocities are typically less than 2 cm/s. Near-inertial motions are relatively large, with current velocities as high as 26 cm/s. It is shown that Marguerite Trough, a large bathymetric feature connecting the shelf-break to Marguerite Bay, plays a critical role in determining the circulation. The mean flow is strongly steered in the along-slope direction, and the tidal currents also show increasing current polarization at depth in Marguerite Trough. At timescales of 5 to 20 days, the observations show bottom-intensified motion in Marguerite Trough consistent with bottom-trapped topographic Rossby waves. The subtidal circulation in the trough has a significant wind-driven component in Marguerite Trough, with downwelling-favorable winds forcing cross-shelf flow on the northern side of the trough and along the shore on the outer shelf. Upwelling-favorable winds force roughly the opposite circulation. The cyclonic circulation on the trough helps advect blobs of salty, warm and nutrient-rich water across the shelf. These intrusions are small (≈4 km) and frequent (4 events/month). Also, the Antarctic Peninsula Coastal Current (APCC), a coastal buoyant current which is described for the first time here. The APCC is a seasonal current which is only present during the ice-free season and is forced by freshwater fluxes associated with large glacier melt and precipitation rates in the region.
    Description: Thanks goes to the agencies who made this thesis possible: the National Science Foundation Office of Polar programs through U.S. Southern Ocean GLOBEC grants OPP 99-10092 and 06-23223, the Chilean government through its Presidential Fellowship program and the Coastal Ocean Institute and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean-atmosphere interaction ; Laurence M. Gould (Ship) Cruise LMG01-03 ; Laurence M. Gould (Ship) Cruise LMG02-1A ; Laurence M. Gould (Ship) Cruise LMG03-02 ; Nathaniel B. Palmer (Ship) Cruise NBP01-03 ; Nathaniel B. Palmer (Ship) Cruise NBP01-04 ; Nathaniel B. Palmer (Ship) Cruise NBP02-02 ; Nathaniel B. Palmer (Ship) Cruise NBP02-04
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 98
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 1996
    Description: Nonlinear quasigeostrophic flows in two layers over a topographic slope are considered. The evolution depends on the size of two parameters which indicate the degree of nonlinearity at depth. The first measures the importance of relative vorticity advection and the second of stretching vorticity. Two types of isolated vortex are used to examine the parameter dependence. An initially barotropic vortex remains barotropic only when the first parameter is large, otherwise topographic waves dominate at depth. An Initially surface-trapped vortex larger than deformation scale is baroclinically unstable when the second is large, but is stabilized by the slope otherwise. Both parameters are also relevant to cascading geostrophic turbulence. If the stretching parameter is large, a "barotropic cascade" occurs at the deformation radius (Rhines, 1977) and the cascade "arrests" when the relative vorticity parameter is order unity. If small, layer coupling is hindered and the cascade is arrested at the deformation scale, with the flow dominated by isotropic surface vortices. In both cases, the distinction between vortices and waves is transparent when viewing potential vorticity. It is more difficult to identify waves and vortices from the streamfunction fields, because the waves are present in both layers.
    Description: Funding for this research was provided by Office of Naval Research Coastal Science Code, grants N00014-92-J-1643 and N00014-92-J-1528.
    Keywords: Rossby waves ; Eddies ; Ocean circulation ; Turbulence ; Submarine topography
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  • 99
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 2003
    Description: The capability of transient tracers to constrain the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic is explored. Study of an idealized tracer shows that inferences of circulation properties from transient state distributions are impacted by uncertainties in the time-varying boundary conditions and sparse data coverage. Comparison of CFC, tritium, temperature and salinity (T-S) observations with model results in the North Atlantic shows that regions of important model-data disagreements in the transient tracer fields can also be readily identified in the T-S distributions. In the model, excessive vertical penetration of convective adjustment, leads to problematic production and outflow of the NADW, again appearing in both transient tracer and T-S fields. Sensitivities of the model fields are determined using the adjoint model. In the dual solutions, CFC-ll, CFC-ll/CFC-12 ratio age, and T - (ß/α)S (α and ß are thermal and haline expansion coefficients, respectively) exhibit the major ventilation pathways and the associated timescales, in the model. High sensitivity fields are candidates for providing the most powerful constraints in the corresponding inverse problems. Assimilation of both CFC and tritium data, with different input histories, sampling distributions, and radioactive decay constants, shows that by adjusting only initial-boundary conditions of CFCs and tritium, a 1° x 1° offline model and the transient tracer data can be brought into near-consistency, in the domain between 4.5°S and 39.5°N of the North Atlantic. Constraining a GCM with transient tracers is thus fully practical. However, the large uncertainties in the time-varying boundary conditions of transient tracer concentrations, and in their interior distributions, renders the transient tracers less-effective in determining the circulation than are more conventional steady tracers, and known oceanic dynamics.
    Description: This work was supported by NSF Award #OCE-9730071 (A Synthesis Of The Global WOCE Observation), #OCE-9617570 (Estimating The Climatological Annual Cycle), and by NASA Award #NAG5-7857 and #NAG5-11933 (A Synthesis Of The Global WOCE Observation).
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Trace elements in water ; Chlorofluorocarbons ; Tritium content ; Radioactive tracers in oceanography ; Chemical oceanography ; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC202 ; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC134 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN214 ; Endeavor (Ship: 1976-) Cruise EN223 ; Charles Darwin (Ship) Cruise CD62 ; Meteor (Ship) Cruise M393
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 100
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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    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 September 2008
    Description: A modern general circulation model of the Southern Ocean with one-sixth of a degree resolution is optimized to the observed ocean in a weighted least squares sense. Convergence to the state estimate solution is carried out by systematically adjusting the control variables (atmospheric state and initial conditions) using the adjoint model. A cost function compares the model state to in situ observations (Argo float profiles, CTD synoptic sections, SEaOS instrument mounted seal profiles, and XBTs), altimetric observations (ENVISAT, GEOSAT, Jason, TOPEX/Poseidon), and other data sets (e.g. infrared and microwave radiometer observed sea surface temperature and NSIDC sea-ice concentration). Costs attributed to control variable perturbations ensure a physically realistic solution. The state estimate is found to be largely consistent with the individual observations, as well as with integrated fluxes inferred from previous static inverse models. The transformed Eulerian mean formulation is an elegant way to theorize about the Southern Ocean. Current researchers utilizing this framework, however, have been making assumptions that render their theories largely irrelevant to the actual ocean. It is shown that theories of the overturning circulation must include the effect of pressure forcing. This is true in the most buoyant waters, where pressure forcing overcomes eddy and wind forcing to balance a poleward geostrophic transport and allows the buoyancy budget to be closed. Pressure forcing is also lowest order at depth. Indeed, the Southern Ocean’s characteristic multiple cell overturning is primarily in geostrophic balance. Several other aspects of the Southern Ocean circulation are also investigated in the thesis, including an analysis of the magnitude and variability of heat, salt, and volume inter-basin transports.
    Description: This work was supported by CalTech - Jet Propulsion Lab contract #1205624 (Global Oceans Dynamics and Transports). Support for my first 2 years in the MITWHOI Joint Program came from NSF awards #OCE-9901654 (Research in Linear and Nonlinear Waves and Ocean Circulation Theory). I was also supported for two months by NSF awards #OCE-0223434.
    Keywords: Ocean circulation ; Ocean temperature
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Thesis
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