The variability of the
North Atlantic Current in
model and observations
Tilia Breckenfelder
Prof. Monika Rhein, Prof. Paul Myers
University of Bremen
MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
Institute of Environmental Physics, Dep. Oceanography
University of Alberta
Dep. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
www.uofa.ualberta.ca/earth-atmospheric-sciences
www.ocean.uni-bremen.de
ArcTrain - International Research Training Group
www.marum.de/ArcTrain
Third annual VITALS science meeting, Halifax, Oct. 20 2015
Tilia Breckenfelder [email protected]
North Atlantic Current (NAC)
• NAC part of the AMOC
Greenland
Iceland
te
es
W
rn
Bo
un
da
ry
Cu
Canada
North
At
en
rr
t
D. Kieke, MARUM
la ntic C
urrent
• warm water into Labrador
Sea
• focus: NAC crosses MidAtlantic Ridge (MAR)
• instruments deployed
• compare observations with
model => to study longerterm fluctuations
What is the NAC transport and its variability at the MAR in
observation and model?
Tilia Breckenfelder [email protected]
2
Data
VIKING20 model
Observation
• 46 vertical levels (6 - 250 m),
1/20° resolution: ~1 to 5 km
• daily satellite altimetry AVISO
product
• initialisation: temperature & salinity
fields from WOA 1998
• observed transport:
combination of along-track SSH
and PIES data (Roessler et al. 2015)
• atmospheric forcing: CORE2
• 1960-2008, five-day-means
E.#Behrens,#GEOMAR#Kiel#
horiz. resolution
km#
60#
50#
40#
30#
20#
10#
9#
8#
7#
6#
5#
4#
3#
2#
1#
Tilia Breckenfelder [email protected]
A. Roessler, IUP Bremen
3
Please contact me for further details:
[email protected]
Tilia Breckenfelder [email protected]