On the suitability of North Brazil Current transport estimates for monitoring basin-scale AMOC changes

Siren Rühs; Klaus Getzlaff; Jonathan V. Durgadoo; Arne Biastoch; Claus W. Boening

doi:10.1002/2015GL065695

On the suitability of North Brazil Current transport estimates for monitoring basin-scale AMOC changes

Siren Rühs, Klaus Getzlaff, Jonathan V. Durgadoo, Arne Biastoch, Claus W. Boening

GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The North Brazil Current (NBC) constitutes a bottleneck for the mean northward return flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in the tropical South Atlantic. Previous studies suggested a link between interannual to multidecadal NBC and AMOC transport variability and proposed to use NBC observations as an index for the AMOC. Here we use a set of hindcast, sensitivity, and perturbation experiments performed within a hierarchy of ocean general circulation models to show that decadal to multidecadal buoyancy-forced changes in the basin-scale AMOC transport indeed manifest themselves in the NBC. The relation is, however, masked by a strong interannual to decadal wind-driven gyre variability of the NBC. While questioning the NBC transport as a direct index for the AMOC, the results support its potential merit for an AMOC monitoring system, provided that the wind-driven circulation variability is properly accounted for.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	8072-8080
Number of pages	9
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	42
Issue number	19
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065695
Publication status	Published - 16 Oct 2015
Externally published	Yes

Funding

Model experiments were performed at the High Performance Computing Centers in Stuttgart (HLRS), Hannover (HLRN) and at the Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel; model code and data are available upon request from the corresponding author. Data from the RAPID-WATCH AMOC monitoring project deployed for model validation are available at www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc. The authors acknowledge funding from the Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean" (CP1412, and Research Platform S4), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under the SPACES project framework (03G0835A). The Ferret program, a product of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, was used for analysis and graphics in this paper. The authors further wish to acknowledge the DRAKKAR group and Erik Behrens for their support in the model development and the realization of individual experiments.

Funders	Funder number
Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean"	CP1412
German Research Foundation (DFG)
German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under the SPACES project	03G0835A

Keywords

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
Buoyancy-driven variability
Ocean general circulation modeling
tropical Atlantic circulation
Wind-driven variability

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10.1002/2015GL065695

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abstract = "The North Brazil Current (NBC) constitutes a bottleneck for the mean northward return flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in the tropical South Atlantic. Previous studies suggested a link between interannual to multidecadal NBC and AMOC transport variability and proposed to use NBC observations as an index for the AMOC. Here we use a set of hindcast, sensitivity, and perturbation experiments performed within a hierarchy of ocean general circulation models to show that decadal to multidecadal buoyancy-forced changes in the basin-scale AMOC transport indeed manifest themselves in the NBC. The relation is, however, masked by a strong interannual to decadal wind-driven gyre variability of the NBC. While questioning the NBC transport as a direct index for the AMOC, the results support its potential merit for an AMOC monitoring system, provided that the wind-driven circulation variability is properly accounted for.",

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On the suitability of North Brazil Current transport estimates for monitoring basin-scale AMOC changes

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