Residual overturning circulation and its connection to Southern Ocean dynamics

Over the last 20 years, our understanding of the meridional overturning circulation has improved, but primarily in a two-dimensional, zonally-averaged framework. In this thesis, I have pushed beyond this simplification and shown that the additional complexity of meanders, storm tracks, and other zonal asymmetries is necessary to reproduce the lowest-order behavior of the overturning circulation. First I examined the role of basin width for determining whether the Atlantic or Pacific oceans experience deep convection. I used a two layered model and a rectangular single-basin model to show that the basin width, in combination with scalings for the overturning circulation make the overturning relatively weaker in the wider basin, priming it for a convection shut down.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Joint Program in Physical Oceanography

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Youngs, Madeleine Kendall.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Glenn R. Flierl.

• Joint Program in Physical Oceanography.
• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129068

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129068