Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2023 APS March Meeting
Volume 68, Number 3
Las Vegas, Nevada (March 5-10)
Virtual (March 20-22); Time Zone: Pacific Time
Session D65: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics of Earth and its Climate
3:00 PM–6:00 PM,
Monday, March 6, 2023
Room: Room 414
Sponsoring
Units:
GPC GSNP
Chair: Mara Freilich; Hussein Aluie, Dept. of Mechanical Engg, University of Rochester. Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Rochester, NY, USA.
Abstract: D65.00001 : The ocean’s global overturning circulation and climate: from observations to process understanding
3:00 PM–3:36 PM
Presenter:
Lynne Talley
(University of California San Diego)
Author:
Lynne Talley
(University of California San Diego)
Here I summarize the global overturning circulation, the underlying global-scale pressure gradients that drive it, and its external forcing, which is a combination of buoyancy (heat and freshwater), wind, and turbulence. Critical asymmetries arising from geography exist between each of the major ocean basins, and between the northern and southern hemispheres. In the Southern Ocean, because of the open ocean that encircles Antarctica, basic dynamics dictates no flow of surface warm waters to the continent, and instead only Deep Waters from all three northern oceans are pulled southward, and then rise to the sea surface. This rise occurs in a southward and upwards spiral, with turbulence at mid-ocean ridge eddy hotspots mitigating its upward progression.
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