Gunnar Voet

Pathways, Volume Transport, and Mixing of Abyssal Water in the Samoan Passage

AbstractThe flow of dense water through the Samoan Passage accounts for the major part of the bottom water renewal in the North Pacific and is thus an important element of the Pacific meridional overturning circulation. A recent set of highly resolved measurements used CTD/LADCP, a microstructure profiler, and moorings to constrain the complex pathways and variability of the abyssal flow. Volume transport estimates for the dense northward current at several sections across the passage, calculated using direct velocity measurements from LADCPs, range from 3.9 × 106 to 6.0 × 106 ± 1 × 106 m3 s−1. The deep channel to the east and shallower pathways to the west carried about equal amounts of this volume transport, with the densest water flowing along the main eastern channel. Turbulent dissipation rates estimated from Thorpe scales and direct microstructure agree to within a factor of 2 and provide a region-averaged value of O(10−8) W kg−1 for layers colder than 0.8°C. Associated diapycnal diffusivities and d...

Frequency content of sea surface height variability from internal gravity waves to mesoscale eddies

High horizontal-resolution (1=12:5 and 1=25 ) 41-layer global simulations of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM), forced by both atmospheric fields and the astronomical tidal potential, are used to construct global maps of sea surface height (SSH) variability. The HYCOM output is separated into steric and nonsteric and into subtidal, diurnal, semidiurnal, and supertidal frequency bands. The model SSH output is compared to two data sets that offer some geographical coverage and that also cover a wide range of frequencies—a set of 351 tide gauges that measure full SSH and a set of 14 in situ vertical profilers from which steric SSH can be calculated. Three of the global maps are of interest in planning for the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) two-dimensional swath altimeter mission: (1) maps of the total and (2) nonstationary internal tidal signal (the latter calculated after removing the stationary internal tidal signal via harmonic analysis), with an average variance of 1:05 and 0:43 cm2, respectively, for the semidiurnal band, and (3) a map of the steric supertidal contributions, which are dominated by the internal gravity wave continuum, with an average variance of 0:15 cm2. Stationary internal tides (which are predictable), nonstationary internal tides (which will be harder to predict), and nontidal internal gravity waves (which will be very difficult to predict) may all be important sources of high-frequency ‘‘noise’’ that could mask lower frequency phenomena in SSH measurements made by the SWOT mission.

Warming and Weakening of the Abyssal Flow through Samoan Passage

AbstractThe abyssal flow of water through the Samoan Passage accounts for the majority of the bottom water renewal in the North Pacific, thereby making it an important element of the meridional overturning circulation. Here the authors report recent measurements of the flow of dense waters of Antarctic and North Atlantic origin through the Samoan Passage. A 15-month long moored time series of velocity and temperature of the abyssal flow was recorded between 2012 and 2013. This allows for an update of the only prior volume transport time series from the Samoan Passage from WOCE moored measurements between 1992 and 1994. While highly variable on multiple time scales, the overall pattern of the abyssal flow through the Samoan Passage was remarkably steady. The time-mean northward volume transport of about 5.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) in 2012/13 was reduced compared to 6.0 Sv measured between 1992 and 1994. This volume transport reduction is significant within 68% confidence limits (±0.4 Sv) but not at 95% conf...

Spectral decomposition of internal gravity wave sea surface height in global models

Two global ocean models ranging in horizontal resolution from 1/12° to 1/48° are used to study the space- and time-scales of sea surface height (SSH) signals associated with internal gravity waves (IGWs). Frequency-horizontal wavenumber SSH spectral densities are computed over seven regions of the world ocean from three simulations of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and two simulations of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm). High-wavenumber, high-frequency SSH variance follows the predicted IGW linear dispersion curves. The realism of high-frequency motions (>0.87cpd) in the models is tested through comparison of the frequency spectral density of dynamic height variance computed from the highest resolution runs of each model (1/25° HYCOM and 1/48° MITgcm) with dynamic height variance frequency spectral density computed from 9 in-situ profiling instruments. These high-frequency motions are of particular interest because of their contributions to the small-scale SSH variability that will be observed on a global scale in the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite altimetry mission. The variance at supertidal frequencies can be comparable to the tidal and low-frequency variance for high-wavenumbers (length scales smaller than ∼50km), especially in the higher resolution simulations. In the highest resolution simulations, the high-frequency variance can be greater than the low-frequency variance at these scales.