The ocean's saltiness and its overturning
Date
2017-02-22Metadata
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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/8840As published
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072223DOI
10.1002/2016GL072223Abstract
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 inline image 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
Description
© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 44 (2017): 1886–1891, doi:10.1002/2016GL072223.
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Geophysical Research Letters 44 (2017): 1886–1891The following license files are associated with this item:
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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