Oceanic ventilation and biogeochemical cycling: Understanding the physical mechanisms that produce realistic distributions of tracers and productivity
IR@C-MMACS: CSIR-Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore
View Archive Info| Field | Value | |
| Title |
Oceanic ventilation and biogeochemical cycling: Understanding the
physical mechanisms that produce realistic distributions of tracers and
productivity
|
|
| Creator |
P S, Swathi
|
|
| Subject |
Ocean Modelling
|
|
| Description |
Differing models of the ocean circulation support different rates of ventilation, which
in turn produce different distributions of radiocarbon, oxygen, and export production. We
examine these fields within a suite of general circulation models run to examine the
sensitivity of the circulation to the parameterization of subgridscale mixing and surface
forcing. We find that different models can explain relatively high fractions of the spatial
variance in some fields such as radiocarbon, and that newer estimates of the rate of
biological cycling are in better agreement with the models than previously published
estimates. We consider how different models achieve such agreement and show that they
can accomplish this in different ways. For example, models with high vertical diffusion
move young surface waters into the Southern Ocean, while models with high winds
move more young North Atlantic water into this region. The dependence on parameter
values is not simple. Changes in the vertical diffusion coefficient, for example, can
produce major changes in advective fluxes. In the coarse-resolution models studied here,
lateral diffusion plays a major role in the tracer budget of the deep ocean, a somewhat
worrisome fact as it is poorly constrained both observationally and theoretically.
|
|
| Publisher |
American Geophysical Union
|
|
| Date |
2004-10-20
|
|
| Type |
Article
PeerReviewed |
|
| Format |
application/pdf
|
|
| Identifier |
http://cir.cmmacs.ernet.in/116/1/ag_jd_pss.pdf
P S, Swathi (2004) Oceanic ventilation and biogeochemical cycling: Understanding the physical mechanisms that produce realistic distributions of tracers and productivity. Global Biogeochemical Cycle, 18 (GB4010). pp. 1-17. |
|
| Relation |
http://cir.cmmacs.ernet.in/116/
|
|