The Beaufort Sea increased its freshwater content by 40% over the past two decades. How and where this water will flow into the Atlantic Ocean is important for local and global ocean conditions. Zhang and colleagues simulated ocean circulation and tracked the Beaufort Sea freshwater’s spread during a historical release episode from 1983 to 1995.
In a recent article published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers investigate the origins of the upper limb of the AMOC at 6°S, from different sections in the global ocean, by determining Lagrangian trajectories and tracing particles backward in time for 2,011 years.
Kersalé, Meinen, and coauthors investigate the MOC flows at the southern end of the South Atlantic Ocean to evaluate the variability of the oceanic circulation across 34.5°S in the South Atlantic at all depths and at a daily frequency. This research highlights the first-ever daily quantification of the time-varying strength of the abyssal cell at 34.5°S, for which prior studies had only produced once-a-decade "snapshot" ship section estimates.
Yin and coauthors use the new GFDL CM4 and CM4HR models to consider a series of climate change experiments under the CMIP6 protocol to study characteristics of extreme sea level events and their future evolution in a fully coupled weather, climate, sea level, and storm surge modeling system. They found that even in the absence of global warming, the Gulf Coast is most vulnerable to hurricane-induced storm surge.
Zou and coauthors analyzed the transport and property fields across the Labrador Sea using OSNAP observations and an ocean reanalysis dataset GloSea5 to study why recent observations revealed minimal contribution of the Labrador Sea convection to the subpolar AMOC strength. They found that the density compensation has important consequences on the strength of the overturning circulation.
Using both observations and simulations from multiple models, researchers show that most models underestimate the amplitude of low-frequency AMOC variability.
An international team of scientists used six years of simultaneous moored observations with satellite winds to produce a new MOC volume transport record for 34.5°S in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Scientists have investigated differences between two arrays (at 16N and 26N) and found that both datasets show deep waters (below 1100 m) at the western boundary becoming fresher and less dense, but there remain discrepancies in the methods measuring ocean circulation.
Researchers show that weakened surface ocean circulation coincides with precipitation during the Little Ice Age and is consistent with little-to-no changes in the larger Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
Using observations and a coupled Earth system model, a new study shows that the decline of the Atlantic major hurricane frequency during 2005–2015 is associated with a weakening of the AMOC.
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