Role of the Southern Ocean in the global ocean circulation

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed study will investigate the potentially significant role of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current System in the global ocean circulation. The focus will be on those specific antarctic processes that can influence the World Ocean, including formation of major water masses in the vicinity of Antarctica, air-sea exchanges of heat, moisture and momentum, as well as eddy mixing in the Southern Ocean. Key questions to be addressed are: 1. What is the dynamical role of the Antarctic Bottom Water? 2. What is the role of the Antarctic Intermediate Water in the global circulation? 3. Why is the global thermohaline circulation sensitive to the magnitude of southern hemisphere winds? 4. What is the sensitivity of the global thermohaline circulation to the magnitudes of southern hemisphere heat and moisture fluxes? 5. What is the role of the eddy mixing in the Southern Ocean? 6. What is the role of the lateral fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum across the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean? These questions will be addressed with an ocean general circulation model coupled to a sophisticated sea-ice model in a series of numerical experiments combining a sufficient degree of realism with computational efficiency, in order to obtain meaningful results within a reasonable time frame. The work significantly improve our understanding of the dynamics of the Southern Ocean, and will emphasize the importance of the Antarctic region and the need for future observational and modeling studies of the area.