Constraining North Atlantic circulation with transient tracer observations

The capability of transient tracers to constrain the ocean circulation in the North Atlantic is explored. Study of an idealized tracer shows that inferences of circulation properties from transient state distributions are impacted by uncertainties in the time-varying boundary conditions and sparse data coverage. Comparison of CFC, tritium, temperature and salinity (T-S) observations with model results in the North Atlantic shows that regions of important model-data disagreements in the transient tracer fields can also be readily identified in the T-S distributions. In the model, excessive vertical penetration of convective adjustment, leads to problematic production and outflow of the NADW, again appearing in both transient tracer and T-S fields. Sensitivities of the model fields are determined using the adjoint model. In the dual solutions, CFC-11, CFC-11/CFC-12 ratio age, and T - (β/α)S (β and α are thermal and haline expansion coefficients, respectively) exhibit the major ventilation pathways and the associated timescales, in the model. High sensitivity fields are candidates for providing the most powerful constraints in the corresponding inverse problems. Assimilation of both CFC and tritium data, with different input histories, sampling distributions, and radioactive decay constants, shows that by adjusting only initial-boundary conditions of CFCs and tritium, a 1⁰ x 1⁰ offline model and the transient tracer data can be brought into near-consistency, in the domain between 4.5⁰S and 39.5⁰N of the North Atlantic. Constraining a GCM with transient tracers is thus fully practical.

Department dc:contributor.department

Joint Program in Physical Oceanography

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Li, Xingwen, 1968-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carl Wunsch.

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

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

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

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/59652

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/59652