Rapid variability of Antarctic Bottom Water transport into the Pacific Ocean inferred from GRACE

Citations Over TimeTop 14% of 2016 papers

Abstract

Abstract Air‐ice‐ocean interactions in the Antarctic lead to formation of the densest waters on Earth. These waters convect and spread to fill the global abyssal oceans. The heat and carbon storage capacity of these water masses, combined with their abyssal residence times that often exceed centuries, makes this circulation pathway the most efficient sequestering mechanism on Earth. Yet monitoring this pathway has proven challenging due to the nature of the formation processes and the depth of the circulation. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) gravity mission is providing a time series of ocean mass redistribution and offers a transformative view of the abyssal circulation. Here we use the GRACE measurements to infer, for the first time, a 2003–2014 time series of Antarctic Bottom Water export into the South Pacific. We find this export highly variable, with a standard deviation of 1.87 sverdrup (Sv) and a decorrelation timescale of less than 1 month. A significant trend is undetectable.

Related Papers

• → Circulation, mixing, and production of Antarctic Bottom Water(1999)1,088 cited
• → Water masses distribution in the Southern Ocean: Improvement of an extended OMP (eOMP) analysis(2012)90 cited
• → Importance of the eastern Indian Ocean for the abyssal Pacific(2002)31 cited
• → Ventilation of the abyss in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean(2020)1 cited
• → Antarctic circulation(1971)4 cited