Holland
Paul R.
Holland
Paul R.
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ArticleModeling of the influence of sea ice cycle and Langmuir circulation on the upper ocean mixed layer depth and freshwater distribution at the West Antarctic Peninsula(American Geophysical Union, 2020-08-03) Schultz, Cristina ; Doney, Scott C. ; Zhang, Weifeng G. ; Regan, Heather ; Holland, Paul R. ; Meredith, Michael P. ; Stammerjohn, Sharon E.The Southern Ocean is chronically undersampled due to its remoteness, harsh environment, and sea ice cover. Ocean circulation models yield significant insight into key processes and to some extent obviate the dearth of data; however, they often underestimate surface mixed layer depth (MLD), with consequences for surface water‐column temperature, salinity, and nutrient concentration. In this study, a coupled circulation and sea ice model was implemented for the region adjacent to the West Antarctic Peninsula, a climatically sensitive region which has exhibited decadal trends towards higher ocean temperature, shorter sea ice season, and increasing glacial freshwater input, overlain by strong interannual variability. Hindcast simulations were conducted with different air‐ice drag coefficients and Langmuir circulation parameterizations to determine the impact of these factors on MLD. Including Langmuir circulation deepened the surface mixed layer, with the deepening being more pronounced in the shelf and slope regions. Optimal selection of an air‐ice drag coefficient also increased modeled MLD by similar amounts and had a larger impact in improving the reliability of the simulated MLD interannual variability. This study highlights the importance of sea ice volume and redistribution to correctly reproduce the physics of the underlying ocean, and the potential of appropriately parameterizing Langmuir circulation to help correct for biases towards shallow MLD in the Southern Ocean. The model also reproduces observed freshwater patterns in the West Antarctic Peninsula during late summer and suggests that areas of intense summertime sea ice melt can still show net annual freezing due to high sea ice formation during the winter.
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ArticleThe contribution of the Weddell Gyre to the lower limb of the Global Overturning Circulation(John Wiley & Sons, 2014-06-05) Jullion, Loic ; Naveira Garabato, Alberto C. ; Bacon, Sheldon ; Meredith, Michael P. ; Brown, Peter J. ; Torres-Valdes, Sinhue ; Speer, Kevin G. ; Holland, Paul R. ; Dong, Jun ; Bakker, Dorothee C. E. ; Hoppema, Mario ; Loose, Brice ; Venables, Hugh J. ; Jenkins, William J. ; Messias, Marie-Jose ; Fahrbach, EberhardThe horizontal and vertical circulation of the Weddell Gyre is diagnosed using a box inverse model constructed with recent hydrographic sections and including mobile sea ice and eddy transports. The gyre is found to convey 42 ± 8 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3 s–1) across the central Weddell Sea and to intensify to 54 ± 15 Sv further offshore. This circulation injects 36 ± 13 TW of heat from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to the gyre, and exports 51 ± 23 mSv of freshwater, including 13 ± 1 mSv as sea ice to the midlatitude Southern Ocean. The gyre's overturning circulation has an asymmetric double-cell structure, in which 13 ± 4 Sv of Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) and relatively light Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) are transformed into upper-ocean water masses by midgyre upwelling (at a rate of 2 ± 2 Sv) and into denser AABW by downwelling focussed at the western boundary (8 ± 2 Sv). The gyre circulation exhibits a substantial throughflow component, by which CDW and AABW enter the gyre from the Indian sector, undergo ventilation and densification within the gyre, and are exported to the South Atlantic across the gyre's northern rim. The relatively modest net production of AABW in the Weddell Gyre (6 ± 2 Sv) suggests that the gyre's prominence in the closure of the lower limb of global oceanic overturning stems largely from the recycling and equatorward export of Indian-sourced AABW.