Mehmet Ilicak

Consequences of future increased Arctic runoff on Arctic Ocean stratification, circulation, and sea ice cover

The Arctic Ocean has important freshwater sources including river runoff, low evaporation, and exchange with the Pacific Ocean. In the future, we expect even larger freshwater input as the global hydrological cycle accelerates, increasing high-latitude precipitation, and river runoff. Previous modeling studies show some robust responses to high-latitude freshwater perturbations, including a strengthening of Arctic stratification and a weakening of the large-scale ocean circulation; some idealized modeling studies also document a stronger cyclonic circulation within the Arctic Ocean itself. With the broad range of scales and processes involved, the overall effect of increasing runoff requires an understanding of both the local processes and the broader linkages between the Arctic and surrounding oceans. Here we adopt a more comprehensive modeling approach by increasing river runoff to the Arctic Ocean in a coupled ice-ocean general circulation model, and show contrasting responses in the polar and subpolar regions. Within the Arctic, the stratification strengthens, the halocline and Atlantic Water layer warm, and the cyclonic circulation spins up, in agreement with previous work. In the subpolar North Atlantic, the model simulates a colder and fresher water column with weaker barotropic circulation. In contrast to the estuarine circulation theory, the volume exchange between the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding oceans does not increase with increasing runoff. While these results are robust in our model, we require experiments with other model systems and more complete observational syntheses to better constrain the sensitivity of the climate system to high-latitude freshwater perturbations.

Baroclinic Instability of the Faroe Bank Channel Overflow

AbstractThe generation mechanism of mesoscale eddies in the Faroe Bank Channel (FBC) overflow region and their spatiotemporal characteristics are examined using the high-resolution regional Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm). From the modeled overflow, it is found that the volume transport downstream of the FBC sill exhibits strong variability with a distinct period of ~4 days. Energetic, alternating cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies appear at ~40 km downstream of the sill. They grow side by side in the nascent stage, but later the cyclones migrate along the 800-m isobath to the south of Iceland, whereas the anticyclones descend downslope across the isobath and gradually dissipate. Analysis of the eddy characteristics shows that the cyclones are associated with a larger plume thickness and width, larger volume transport, colder and denser water, and a plume core located farther downslope, whereas the opposite is true for the anticyclones. The oscillatory structure deve...

Description and evaluation of NorESM1-F: A fast version of theNorwegian Earth System Model (NorESM)

A new computationally efficient version of the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) is presented. This new version (here termed NorESM1-F) runs about 2.5 times faster (e.g. 90 model years per day on current hardware) than the version that contributed to the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison project (CMIP5), i.e., NorESM1-M, and is therefore particularly suitable for multi-millennial paleoclimate and carbon cycle simulations or large ensemble simulations. The speedup is 5 primarily a result of using a prescribed atmosphere aerosol chemistry and a tripolar ocean-sea ice horizontal grid configuration that allows an increase of the ocean-sea ice component time steps. Ocean biogeochemistry can be activated for fully coupled and semi-coupled carbon cycle applications. This paper describes the model and evaluates its performance using observations and NorESM1-M as benchmarks. The evaluation emphasises model stability, important large-scale features in the ocean and sea ice components, internal variability in the coupled system, and climate sensitivity. Simulation results from NorESM1-F 10 in general agree well with observational estimates, and show evident improvements over NorESM1-M, for example, in the strength of the meridional overturning circulation and sea ice simulation, both important metrics in simulating past and future climates. Whereas NorESM1-M showed a slight global cool bias in the upper oceans, NorESM1-F exhibits a global warm bias. In general, however, NorESM1-F has more similarities than dissimilarities compared to NorESM1-M, and some biases and deficiencies known in NorESM1-M remain. 15

Quantifying spatial distribution of spurious mixing in ocean models

Numerical mixing is inevitable for ocean models due to tracer advection schemes. Until now, there is no robust way to identify the regions of spurious mixing in ocean models. We propose a new method to compute the spatial distribution of the spurious diapycnic mixing in an ocean model. This new method is an extension of available potential energy density method proposed by Winters and Barkan (2013). We test the new method in lock-exchange and baroclinic eddies test cases. We can quantify the amount and the location of numerical mixing. We find high-shear areas are the main regions which are susceptible to numerical truncation errors. We also test the new method to quantify the numerical mixing in different horizontal momentum closures. We conclude that Smagorinsky viscosity has less numerical mixing than the Leith viscosity using the same non-dimensional constant.

Variability along the Atlantic water pathway in the forced Norwegian Earth System Model

The growing attention on mechanisms that can provide predictability on interannual-to-decadal time scales, makes it necessary to identify how well climate models represent such mechanisms. In this study we use a high (0.25° horizontal grid) and a medium (1°) resolution version of a forced global ocean-sea ice model, utilising the Norwegian Earth System Model, to assess the impact of increased ocean resolution. Our target is the simulation of temperature and salinity anomalies along the pathway of warm Atlantic water in the subpolar North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas. Although the high resolution version has larger biases in general at the ocean surface, the poleward propagation of thermohaline anomalies is better resolved in this version, i.e., the time for an anomaly to travel northward is more similar to observation based estimates. The extent of these anomalies can be rather large in both model versions, as also seen in observations, e.g., stretching from Scotland to northern Norway. The easternmost branch into the Nordic and Barents Seas, carrying warm Atlantic water, is also improved by higher resolution, both in terms of mean heat transport and variability in thermohaline properties. A more detailed assessment of the link between the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and the thermohaline anomalies at the entrance of the Nordic Seas reveals that the high resolution is more consistent with mechanisms that are previously published. This suggests better dynamics and variability in the subpolar region and the Nordic Seas in the high resolution compared to the medium resolution. This is most likely due a better representation of the mean circulation in the studied region when using higher resolution. As the poleward propagation of ocean heat anomalies is considered to be a key source of climate predictability, we recommend that similar methodology presented herein should be performed on coupled climate models that are used for climate prediction.