An analytical model of subtropical mode water is presented, based on ventilated thermocline theory and on numerical solutions of a planetary geostrophic basin model. In ventilated thermocline theory, the western pool is a region bounded on the east by subsurface streamlines that outcrop at the western edge of the interior, and in which additional dynamical assumptions are necessary to complete ...

[1] The dynamics of the seasonal cycle in the upper equatorial Atlantic ocean are studied using observations and a hierarchy of ocean models. Distinctive features of the seasonal cycle are strong annual and semiannual components: eastward (westward) propagating sea surface height (SSH) and thermocline depth at the equator (off the equator) and westward propagating surface zonal currents at the ...

Anthropogenic emissions of nitrogen (N) to the atmosphere have been strongly increasing during the last century, leading to greater atmospheric N deposition to the oceans. The North Atlantic subtropical gyre (NASTG) is particularly impacted. Here, upwind sources of anthropogenic N from North American and European sources have raised atmospheric N deposition to rates comparable with N2 fixation ...

Vertical displacement of the thermocline may be due either to a convergence or a divergence of Ekman transport in the surface layer. Data from ships of opportunity between New Caledonia an¿ Japan are used to compute the wind stress curl, from 1973 to 1980, neglecting the zonal gradients. The pattern is compared to the changes of the 25OC isotherm depth between 5ON\ and 20°S from all data availa...

[1] Throughout the Cenozoic the Earth experienced global cooling that led to the appearance of continental glaciers in high northern latitudes around 3 Ma ago. At approximately the same time, cold surface waters first appeared in regions that today have intense oceanic upwelling: the eastern equatorial Pacific and the coastal zones of southwestern Africa and California. There was furthermore a ...

The mechanism of thermocline ventilation is investigated using a global, high-resolution ocean GCM, with realistic topography and surface wind forcing. Because 2-dimensional representations of circulation can be misleading, the subsurface flow is examined by visualizing the trajectories of particles which subduct in the mid-latitudes and travel within the ventilated thermocline. Three model run...

During November and December 1983, two anticyclonic eddies were observed west of the Agulhas Retroflection, apparently spawned at the retroflection. The western eddy, centered 300 kilometers southwest of Cape Town, has a winter cooled core encircled by warm Indian Ocean water. Between Cape Town and the "Cape Town Eddy" is a net geostrophic transport of Indian Ocean thermocline water (14 x 10(6)...

A current scenario to explain much of the atmospheric CO2 increase during the Glacial to Holocene climate transition requires the outgassing of a deep, old oceanic CO2 reservoir thought to be located in the Southern Ocean. In this scenario, CO2-rich and 14C-depleted subsurface Antarctic-sourced water, ventilates the thermocline where it is purged to the atmosphere in the equatorial regions, a v...

The nonlinear principal component analysis (NLPCA), via a neural network approach, was applied to thermocline anomalies in the tropical Pacific. While the tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies had been nonlinearly mapped by the NLPCA mode 1 onto an open curve in the data space, the thermocline anomalies were mapped to a closed curve, suggesting that ENSO is a cyclic phenomenon. The N...

[1] This study presents an analysis of observed data sets from multiple sources, including observations from a network of Argo floats during (2002–2003), with the aim of investigating the role of the southwest monsoon circulation in affecting the interactions between the oceanic mixed layer and the underlying thermocline in the northern Indian Ocean. Examination of the seasonal cycle of the upp...