Abyssal Upwelling and Downwelling Driven by Near-Boundary Mixing
Name
Abyssal upwelling and downwelling.pdf
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1.05 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
McDougall, Trevor J.
Ferrari, Raffaele
Date Issued
January 2017
Journal
Journal of Physical Oceanography
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Citation
McDougall, Trevor J., and Ferrari, Raffaele. “Abyssal Upwelling and Downwelling Driven by Near-Boundary Mixing.” Journal of Physical Oceanography 47, 2 (February 2017): 261–283 © 2017 American Meteorological Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
A buoyancy and volume budget analysis of bottom-intensified mixing in the abyssal ocean reveals simple expressions for the strong upwelling in very thin continental boundary layers and the interior near-boundary downwelling in the stratified ocean interior. For a given amount of Antarctic Bottom Water that is upwelled through neutral density surfaces in the abyssal ocean (between 2000 and 5000 m), up to 5 times this volume flux is upwelled in narrow, turbulent, sloping bottom boundary layers, while up to 4 times the net upward volume transport of Bottom Water flows downward across isopycnals in the near-boundary stratified ocean interior. These ratios are a direct result of a buoyancy budget with respect to buoyancy surfaces, and these ratios are calculated from knowledge of the stratification in the abyss along with the assumed e-folding height that characterizes the decrease of the magnitude of the turbulent diapycnal buoyancy flux away from the seafloor. These strong diapycnal upward and downward volume transports are confined to a few hundred kilometers of the continental boundaries, with no appreciable diapycnal motion in the bulk of the interior ocean.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-16-0082.1
