Ocean Circulation and Climate
Ocean Circulation and Climate

Author: Carl Wunsch

Publisher: Elsevier Inc. Chapters

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 0128058706

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The World Ocean Circulation Experiment drove the development of estimates of the decadal scale time evolving general circulation that are dynamically and kinematically consistent. A long timescale, and a goal of estimation rather than prediction, preclude the use of meteorological methods called “data assimilation (DA).” Instead, “state estimation” methods are reviewed here and distinguished from DA. Results from the dynamically consistent family of solutions from the project Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean based upon least-squares Lagrange multipliers (adjoints) are used to discuss the determination of the dominant elements of the circulation in the period since 1992—which marked the beginning of the satellite altimetric record. Significant changes documented in the Arctic in recent decades now mandate consideration of the coupled ocean-cryospheric state.

Eddies in Marine Science
Eddies in Marine Science

Author: A. R. Robinson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 871

ISBN-13: 3642690033

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It is now well known that the mid-ocean flow is almost everywhere domi nated by so-called synoptic or meso-scale eddies, rotating about nearly vertical axes and extending throughout the water column. A typical mid ocean horizontal scale is 100 km and a time scale is 100 days: these meso scale eddies have swirl speeds of order 10 cm s -1 which are usually con siderably greater than the long-term average flow. Many types of eddies with somewhat different scales and characteristics have been identified. The existence of such eddies was suspected by navigators more than a century ago and confirmed by the world of C. O'D. Iselin and V. B. Stock man in the 1930's. Measurements from RIV Aries in 1959/60, using the then newly developed neutrally buoyant floats, indicated the main char acteristics of the eddies in the deep ocean of the NW Atlantic while a se ries of Soviet moored current-meter arrays culminated, in POLYGON- 1970, in the explicit mapping of an energetic anticyclonic eddy in the tropical NE Atlantic. In 1973 a large collaborative (mainly U. S. , U. K. ) program, MODE-I, produced synoptic charts for an area of the NW At lantic and confirmed the existence of an open ocean eddy field and es tablished its characteristics. Meso-scale eddies are now known to be of interest and importance to marine chemists and biologists as well as to physical oceanographers and meteorologists.