The ocean's saltiness and its overturning
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Cael_et_al-2017-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
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Author(s)
Cael, B. B.
Ferrari, Raffaele
Date Issued
February 2017
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Cael, B. B., and Raffaele Ferrari. “The Ocean’s Saltiness and Its Overturning.” Geophysical Research Letters 44, 4 (February 2017): 1886–1891 © 2017 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Here we explore the relationship between the mean salinity S of the ocean and the strength of its Atlantic and Pacific Meridional Overturning Circulations (AMOC and PMOC). We compare simulations performed with a realistically configured coarse-grained ocean model, spanning a range of mean salinities. We find that the AMOC strength increases approximately linearly with S. In contrast, the PMOC strength declines approximately linearly with S until it reaches a small background value similar to the present-day ocean. Well-established scaling laws for the overturning circulation explain both of these dependencies on S.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072223
