The Relationship between Water Mass Formation and the Surface Buoyancy Flux, with Application to Phillips’ Red Sea Model

Garrett, Chris; Speer, Kevin; Tragou, Elina

doi:10.1175/1520-0485(1995)025<1696:trbwmf>2.0.co;2

Cited by 49 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…Much work has also been done on mixing-driven flows along sloping boundary layers (e.g., Armi 1978;Garrett et al 1993). However, the two lines of research have proceeded largely independently of each other.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, there is growing evidence from in situ measurements that the turbulent kinetic energy generated by breaking internal waves is large within a few hundred meters of rough-bottom topography and decays to weaker values farther up in the water column. The bottom enhancement of turbulence reflects the generation of energetic waves by tides and geostrophic flows impinging over topography and breaking locally (e.g., Wunsch and Ferrari 2004;Garrett and Kunze 2007;Nikurashin and Ferrari 2013). During a breaking event most of the energy is lost to dissipation, but a fraction is expended in mixing the stratified fluid (Osborn 1980).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Turning Ocean Mixing Upside Down

Ferrari

Mashayek

McDougall

et al. 2016

Journal of Physical Oceanography

160

249

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It is generally understood that small-scale mixing, such as is caused by breaking internal waves, drives upwelling of the densest ocean waters that sink to the ocean bottom at high latitudes. However, the observational evidence that the strong turbulent fluxes generated by small-scale mixing in the stratified ocean interior are more vigorous close to the ocean bottom boundary than above implies that small-scale mixing converts light waters into denser ones, thus driving a net sinking of abyssal waters. Using a combination of theoretical ideas and numerical models, it is argued that abyssal waters upwell along weakly stratified boundary layers, where small-scale mixing of density decreases to zero to satisfy the no density flux condition at the ocean bottom. The abyssal ocean meridional overturning circulation is the small residual of a large net sinking of waters, driven by small-scale mixing in the stratified interior above the bottom boundary layers, and a slightly larger net upwelling, driven by the decay of small-scale mixing in the boundary layers. The crucial importance of upwelling along boundary layers in closing the abyssal overturning circulation is the main finding of this work.

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Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning Ocean Mixing Upside Down

Ferrari

Mashayek

McDougall

et al. 2016

Journal of Physical Oceanography

160

249

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In oceanographic datasets, diagnosed transformation rates, F( CT, t), differ largely from diapycnal fluxes, A(CT, t) (Speer and Tziperman 1992;Garrett et al 1995), primarily because interior ocean dynamics are neglected in the buoyancy budget. In the surface layer region, non-advective buoyancy input is balanced by the advective component.…”

Section: Act (421)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this way, the total supply of buoyancy by The advective supply of buoyancy is by diapycnal advection or by advection across the open boundaries. For an enclosed region of the ocean, Garrett et al (1995) give a detailed derivation of (4.21), and Nakamura (1995) independently derived this relation for atmospheric tracers. With these new definitions, conservation of buoyancy can be rewritten in a final form:…”

Section: Act (421)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Subduction in an eddy-resolving state estimate of the northeast Atlantic Ocean

Gebbie¹

2004

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“…Walin, 1982;Tziperman, 1986). The distribution of B has been studied in theoretical studies (Garrett et al, 1995;Nurser et al, 1999), for the North Atlantic basin (e.g. Schmitt et al, 1989;Speer, 1997), the Southern Ocean (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A practical indicator for surface ocean heat and freshwater buoyancy fluxes and its application to the NCEP reanalysis data

Karstensen¹,

Lorbacher²

2011

TELLUSA

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A B S T R A C TThe buoyancy flux at the air/sea interface plays a key role in water mass transformation and mixing as it modifies surface water density and in turn drives overturning and enhances stratification. It is the interplay of these two independent heat and freshwater buoyancy flux components that is of central importance when analysing mechanisms of the ocean/atmosphere interaction. Here, a diagnostic quantity ( B ) is presented that allows to capture the relative contribution of both components on the buoyancy flux in one single quantity. Using NCEP reanalysis of heat and freshwater fluxes demonstrates that B is a convenient tool to analyse both the temporal and spatial variability of their corresponding buoyancy fluxes. For the global ocean the areal extent of buoyancy gain and loss regions changed by 10%, with the largest extent of buoyancy gain during the 1970-1990 period. In the subpolar North Atlantic, and likewise in the South Pacific, decadal variability in freshwater flux is pronounced and, for the latter region, takes control over the total buoyancy flux since the 1980s. Some of the areal extent time series show a significant correlation with large-scale climate indices.

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The Relationship between Water Mass Formation and the Surface Buoyancy Flux, with Application to Phillips’ Red Sea Model

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Turning Ocean Mixing Upside Down

Turning Ocean Mixing Upside Down

Subduction in an eddy-resolving state estimate of the northeast Atlantic Ocean

A practical indicator for surface ocean heat and freshwater buoyancy fluxes and its application to the NCEP reanalysis data

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