As the surface ocean warms and polar ice sheets melt due to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, near-surface stratification is increasing almost everywhere, including the major deep water formation regions in the high-latitude North Atlantic and around Antarctica. As a result, the global Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), also known as the global ocean... Continue Reading →
The Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is the densest water mass of the global ocean that covers about 30 ~ 40% of the global ocean volume with temperatures ranging from -0.8 to 2°C and salinities from 34.6 to 34.7 psu. It forms around Antarctica and spreads into the Southern Ocean and then into the Atlantic, Indian,... Continue Reading →
The Larsen ice shelves extend along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula over the northwest part of the Weddell Sea. From north to south, these segments are called the Larsen A, B, C, and D, bordered by Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf south of the Weddell Sea. In 1995, the Larsen A ice shelf completely disintegrated,... Continue Reading →
The warming response of the upper atmosphere is much stronger in the tropics due to higher water vapor content and frequent deep tropical convection that maintains the atmosphere column well-mixed. As a result, the zonal jet strength, which is largely proportional to the meridional gradient of atmosphere temperature via "thermal wind relationship" is projected to... Continue Reading →
It is a common practice in Physical Oceanography to separate the Atlantic Ocean circulations into the meridional overturning and wind-driven gyre components with an assumption that the two components are largely independent of each other. An article published in Nature Communications suggests that the two components are not at all independent. The study shows that... Continue Reading →
Due to rapidly rising air temperature over the Arctic and subarctic regions, the ocean-to-air turbulent (i.e., sensible and latent) heat flux over the Greenland, Iceland, and Norwegian Seas (GINS) has diminished (i.e., less cooling of the surface ocean) steadily during the satellite period (i.e., since the 1970s). This may lead to a reduction of deep... Continue Reading →
The freshwater cycle in the Earth System is a delicate balance between the net loss (i.e., evaporation > precipitation) in the warm tropical-subtropical oceans, the net gain (i.e., precipitation > evaporation) in the cold polar oceans, and the net poleward transport by the atmosphere. These processes maintain the tropical-subtropical oceans salty and the polar oceans... Continue Reading →
Enceladus is a miniature-size Saturn's moon (Earth's moon is about 7 times larger) known to have a deep ocean (~ 40km) beneath the thick icy crust (~20km). It has been suggested that Enceladus’s interior ocean is heated from below through hydrothermal activity, powered by tidal dissipation. The ocean should in turn carry the heat to... Continue Reading →
The Arctic Ocean in the upper 100 - 200 m is typically characterized by a cold and fresh surface mixed layer and a layer of rapidly increasing salinity with depth, as known as halocline, separating the surface mixed layer from the warm and salty Atlantic water at depth. Due to large vertical density gradient and... Continue Reading →
The climate model simulations forced with increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases consistently project a robust decline of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and a strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, which may in turn result in an increase in the Southern Ocean MOC. In a research article recently accepted in the Journal of Physical... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 