Evaluation of interior circulation in a high-resolution global ocean model. Part II: Southern hemisphere intermediate, mode, and thermocline waters

Abstract

A high-resolution, offline ocean general circulation model, incorporating a realistic parameterization of mixed layer convection, is used to diagnose pathways and time scales of Southern Hemisphere intermediate, mode, and lower thermocline water ventilation. The use of such an offline methodology represents the only feasible way of simulating the long time scales required to validate the internal pathways of a high-resolution ocean model. Simulated and observed chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11) are in reasonably good agreement, demonstrating the model's skill in representing realistic ventilation. Regional passive dye and age tracer experiments aid in the identification of pathways originating from different Southern Hemisphere locations. Northern Hemisphere penetration of intermediate, mode, and thermocline waters is most extensive and rapid into the North Atlantic Ocean because these waters are involved in closing the Atlantic meridional overturning cell. However, less than 8% of this ventilation is derived from subduction within the South Atlantic in the simulation. Instead, this water enters the Atlantic just to the south of South Africa, having originally subducted primarily in the east Indian Ocean, but also in the west Indian Ocean and the west Pacific region where a pathway advects water westward to the south of Australia. This pathway also plays a large part, together with water overturned in the east Indian Ocean, in ventilating the northern reaches of the Indian basin. Northward propagation in the Pacific Ocean is limited to the low latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and is almost exclusively accomplished by water subducted in the South Pacific. A small contribution is made from the other basins from water that spreads northward, fed by a circumpolar pathway associated with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that forms a conduit for intermediate and mode water exchange between all three basins. Intermediate water is injected into and branches off this pathway in all basins, but most vigorously in the southeastern Pacific. © 2007 American Meteorological Society.