Nurser A. J. George

No Thumbnail Available
Last Name
Nurser
First Name
A. J. George
ORCID

Filters

2016 - 2019 3
3
3
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Article
    Recent wind-driven variability in Atlantic water mass distribution and meridional overturning circulation
    (American Meteorological Society, 2017-03-17) Evans, Dafydd Gwyn ; Toole, John M. ; Forget, Gael ; Zika, Jan D. ; Naveira Garabato, Alberto C. ; Nurser, A. J. George ; Yu, Lisan
    Interannual variability in the volumetric water mass distribution within the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre is described in relation to variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. The relative roles of diabatic and adiabatic processes in the volume and heat budgets of the subtropical gyre are investigated by projecting data into temperature coordinates as volumes of water using an Argo-based climatology and an ocean state estimate (ECCO version 4). This highlights that variations in the subtropical gyre volume budget are predominantly set by transport divergence in the gyre. A strong correlation between the volume anomaly due to transport divergence and the variability of both thermocline depth and Ekman pumping over the gyre suggests that wind-driven heave drives transport anomalies at the gyre boundaries. This wind-driven heaving contributes significantly to variations in the heat content of the gyre, as do anomalies in the air–sea fluxes. The analysis presented suggests that wind forcing plays an important role in driving interannual variability in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and that this variability can be unraveled from spatially distributed hydrographic observations using the framework presented here.
  • Article
    Arctic pathways of Pacific Water : Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison experiments
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2016-01-08) Aksenov, Yevgeny ; Karcher, Michael ; Proshutinsky, Andrey ; Gerdes, Rudiger ; de Cuevas, Beverly ; Golubeva, Elena ; Kauker, Frank ; Nguyen, An T. ; Platov, Gennady A. ; Wadley, Martin ; Watanabe, Eiji ; Coward, Andrew C. ; Nurser, A. J. George
    Pacific Water (PW) enters the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait and brings in heat, fresh water, and nutrients from the northern Bering Sea. The circulation of PW in the central Arctic Ocean is only partially understood due to the lack of observations. In this paper, pathways of PW are investigated using simulations with six state-of-the art regional and global Ocean General Circulation Models (OGCMs). In the simulations, PW is tracked by a passive tracer, released in Bering Strait. Simulated PW spreads from the Bering Strait region in three major branches. One of them starts in the Barrow Canyon, bringing PW along the continental slope of Alaska into the Canadian Straits and then into Baffin Bay. The second begins in the vicinity of the Herald Canyon and transports PW along the continental slope of the East Siberian Sea into the Transpolar Drift, and then through Fram Strait and the Greenland Sea. The third branch begins near the Herald Shoal and the central Chukchi shelf and brings PW into the Beaufort Gyre. In the models, the wind, acting via Ekman pumping, drives the seasonal and interannual variability of PW in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. The wind affects the simulated PW pathways by changing the vertical shear of the relative vorticity of the ocean flow in the Canada Basin.
  • Article
    SEASTAR: A mission to study ocean submesoscale dynamics and small-scale atmosphere-ocean processes in coastal, shelf and polar seas
    (Frontiers Media, 2019-08-13) Gommenginger, Christine ; Chapron, Bertrand ; Hogg, Andy ; Buckingham, Christian ; Fox-Kemper, Baylor ; Eriksson, Leif ; Soulat, Francois ; Ubelmann, Clement ; Ocampo-Torres, Francisco ; Nardelli, Bruno Buongiorno ; Griffin, David ; Lopez-Dekker, Paco ; Knudsen, Per ; Andersen, Ole ; Stenseng, Lars ; Stapleton, Neil ; Perrie, Will ; Violante-Carvalho, Nelson ; Schulz-Stellenfleth, Johannes ; Woolf, David K. ; Isern-Fontanet, Jordi ; Ardhuin, Fabrice ; Klein, Patrice ; Mouche, Alexis ; Pascual, Ananda ; Capet, Xavier ; Hauser, Daniele ; Stoffelen, Ad ; Morrow, Rosemary ; Aouf, Lotfi ; Breivik, Øyvind ; Fu, Lee-Lueng ; Johannessen, Johnny A. ; Aksenov, Yevgeny ; Bricheno, Lucy ; Hirschi, Joel ; Martin, Adrien C. H. ; Martin, Adrian P. ; Nurser, A. J. George ; Polton, Jeff ; Wolf, Judith ; Johnsen, Harald ; Soloviev, Alexander ; Jacobs, Gregg A. ; Collard, Fabrice ; Groom, Steve ; Kudryavtsev, Vladimir ; Wilkin, John L. ; Navarro, Victor ; Babanin, Alexander ; Martin, Matthew ; Siddorn, John ; Saulter, Andrew ; Rippeth, Tom P. ; Emery, Bill ; Maximenko, Nikolai ; Romeiser, Roland ; Graber, Hans C. ; Alvera Azcarate, Aida ; Hughes, Chris W. ; Vandemark, Douglas ; da Silva, Jose ; Van Leeuwen, Peter Jan ; Naveira Garabato, Alberto C. ; Gemmrich, Johannes ; Mahadevan, Amala ; Marquez, Jose ; Munro, Yvonne ; Doody, Sam ; Burbidge, Geoff
    High-resolution satellite images of ocean color and sea surface temperature reveal an abundance of ocean fronts, vortices and filaments at scales below 10 km but measurements of ocean surface dynamics at these scales are rare. There is increasing recognition of the role played by small scale ocean processes in ocean-atmosphere coupling, upper-ocean mixing and ocean vertical transports, with advanced numerical models and in situ observations highlighting fundamental changes in dynamics when scales reach 1 km. Numerous scientific publications highlight the global impact of small oceanic scales on marine ecosystems, operational forecasts and long-term climate projections through strong ageostrophic circulations, large vertical ocean velocities and mixed layer re-stratification. Small-scale processes particularly dominate in coastal, shelf and polar seas where they mediate important exchanges between land, ocean, atmosphere and the cryosphere, e.g., freshwater, pollutants. As numerical models continue to evolve toward finer spatial resolution and increasingly complex coupled atmosphere-wave-ice-ocean systems, modern observing capability lags behind, unable to deliver the high-resolution synoptic measurements of total currents, wind vectors and waves needed to advance understanding, develop better parameterizations and improve model validations, forecasts and projections. SEASTAR is a satellite mission concept that proposes to directly address this critical observational gap with synoptic two-dimensional imaging of total ocean surface current vectors and wind vectors at 1 km resolution and coincident directional wave spectra. Based on major recent advances in squinted along-track Synthetic Aperture Radar interferometry, SEASTAR is an innovative, mature concept with unique demonstrated capabilities, seeking to proceed toward spaceborne implementation within Europe and beyond.