Wind-Driven Ocean Circulation in Shallow Water Lattice Boltzmann Model

A lattice Boltzmann (LB) model with overall second-order accuracy is applied to the 1.5-layer shallow water equation for a wind-driven double-gyre ocean circulation. By introducing the second-order integral approximation for the collision operator, the model becomes fully explicit. In this case, any iterative technique is not needed. The Coriolis force and other external forces are included in the model with second-order accuracy, which is consistent with the discretized accuracy of the LB equation. The numerical results show correct physics of the ocean circulation driven by the double-gyre wind stress with different Reynolds numbers and different spatial resolutions. An intrinsic low-frequency variability of the shallow water model is also found. The wind-driven ocean circulation exhibits subannual and interannual oscillations, which are comparable to those of models in which the conventional numerical methods are used.     

Wind-driven changes in Southern Ocean residual circulation, ocean carbon reservoirs and atmospheric CO2

The effect of idealized wind-driven circulation changes in the Southern Ocean on atmospheric CO₂ and the ocean carbon inventory is investigated using a suite of coarse-resolution, global coupled ocean circulation and biogeochemistry experiments with parameterized eddy activity and only modest changes in surface buoyancy forcing, each experiment integrated for 5,000 years. A positive correlation is obtained between the meridional overturning or residual circulation in the Southern Ocean and atmospheric CO₂: stronger or northward-shifted westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere result in increased residual circulation, greater upwelling of carbon-rich deep waters and oceanic outgassing, which increases atmospheric pCO₂ by ～20 μatm; weaker or southward-shifted winds lead to the opposing result. The ocean carbon inventory in our model varies through contrasting changes in the saturated, disequilibrium and biogenic (soft-tissue and carbonate) reservoirs, each varying by O(10–100) PgC, all of which contribute to the net anomaly in atmospheric CO₂. Increased residual overturning deepens the global pycnocline, warming the upper ocean and decreasing the saturated carbon reservoir. Increased upwelling of carbon- and nutrient-rich deep waters and inefficient biological activity results in subduction of unutilized nutrients into the ocean interior, decreasing the biogenic carbon reservoir of intermediate and mode waters ventilating the Northern Hemisphere, and making the disequilibrium carbon reservoir more positive in the mode waters due to the reduced residence time at the surface. Wind-induced changes in the model carbon inventory are dominated by the response of the global pycnocline, although there is an additional abyssal response when the peak westerly winds change their latitude, altering their proximity to Drake Passage and changing the depth extent of the southward return flow of the overturning: a northward shift of the westerly winds isolates dense isopycnals, allowing biogenic carbon to accumulate in the deep ocean of the Southern Hemisphere, while a southward shift shoals dense isopycnals that outcrop in the Southern Ocean and reduces the biogenic carbon store in the deep ocean.     

Wind-driven, double-gyre, ocean circulation in a reduced-gravity, 2.5-layer, lattice boltzmann model

A coupled lattice Boltzmann （LB） model with second-order accuracy is applied to the reduced-gravity, shallow water, 2.5-layer model for wind-driven double-gyre ocean circulation. By introducing the secondorder integral approximation for the collision operator, the model becomes fully explicit. The Coriolis force and other external forces are included in the model with second-order accuracy, which is consistent with the discretization accuracy of the LB equation. The feature of the multiple equilibria solutions is found in the numerical experiments under different Reynolds numbers based on this LB scheme. With the Reynolds number increasing from 3000 to 4000, the solution of this model is destabilized from the anti-symmetric double-gyre solution to the subtropic gyre solution and then to the subpolar gyre solution. The transitions between these equilibria states are also found in some parameter ranges. The time-dependent variability of the circulation based on this LB simulation is also discussed for varying viscosity regimes. The flow of this model exhibits oscillations with different timescales varying from subannual to interannual. The corresponding statistical oscillation modes are obtained by spectral analysis. By analyzing the spatiotemporal structures of these modes, it is found that the subannual oscillation with a 9-month period originates from the barotropic Rossby basin mode, and the interarmual oscillations with periods ranging from 1.5 years to 4.6 years originate from the recirculation gyre modes, which include the barotropic and the baroclinic recirculation gyre modes.     

A numerical world ocean general circulation model Part I. Basic design and barotropic experiment

A new six-layer world ocean general circulation model based on the primitive system of equations is described in detail and its performance in the case of a homogeneous ocean is described. These test integrations show that the model is capable of reproducing the observed mean barotropic or vertically-integrated transport, as well as the seasonal variability of the major ocean gyres. The surface currents, however, are dominated by the Ekman transport, and such non-linear features as the western boundary currents and the equatorial countercurrents are poorly represented. The abyssal boundary countercurrents are also absent due to the lack of thermohaline forcing. The most conspicuous effect of the bottom topography on a homogeneous ocean is seen in the Southern ocean where the calculated Antarctic circumpolar transport through the Drake passage ( ≈ 10 Sv, with bathymetry included) greatly underestimates the observed transport (≈ 100 Sv).     

The generalized energy equation and instability in the two-layer barotropic vortex

The linear two-layer barotropic primitive equations in cylindrical coordinates are used to derive a gen- eralized energy equation, which is subsequently applied to explain the instability of the spiral wave in the model. In the two-layer model, there are not only the generalized barotropic instability and the super high- speed instability, but also some other new instabilities, which fall into the range of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and the generalized baroclinic instability, when the upper and lower basic flows are different. They are perhaps the mechanisms of the generation of spiral cloud bands in tropical cyclones as well.     

An unsteady wind-driven ocean circulation model

This model of a continuously stratified ocean, consisting of surface Ekman and thermal layers and a deep abyssal region, is driven by an unsteady surface wind stress. The model yields a nonlinear planetary wave equation for the surface temperature which is solved by the method of characteristics. Horizontal distributions of the surface temperature, the heat content and the potential energy are computed. For a model zonal wind stress relevant to the North Atlantic, a parameter sensitivity study is made.Long time scale observations of the heat content in the North Atlantic north of 45°N show that periods of heating and cooling of a few decades duration frequently occur. Using a zonal wind stress consisting of the superposition of a mean and two time harmonic components, secular variations in the surface temperature field manifest themselves as a beat period, provided the time harmonic frequencies are close together. Finally, to investigate the effects on the circulation produced by the changing intensity of the westerly winds, numerical results are presented for the case when the wind stress distribution oscillates in the north-south direction with time. Results from the study show that the heating and cooling periods of a few decades duration in the North Atlantic can be reproduced.     

Sensitivity of near-surface atmospheric circulation to tropical instability waves

A set of atmospheric general circulation model experiments were performed where the Community Atmospheric Model version 3.1 is forced with sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) that have the imprint of tropical instability waves (TIWs) of varying strengths. The presence of TIWs in the SSTs increased the variance in the large-scale circulation in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The impact of TIWs in the SST anomalies is directly seen in enhanced mixing of the air temperature anomalies, thereby diffusing the air temperature gradients setup by the oceanic fronts throughout the ABL. The presence of TIWs transformed the diffusive-natured ABL to advection-dominated regime. This implies that within the ABL, the presence of TIWs leads to the enhanced interactions among the neighboring grid cells and prompts greater horizontal communications among atmospheric variables. However, the advection in the ABL due to the TIWs is not a linear function of increasing TIW strength. Unlike air temperature, zonal, and vertical velocity, the variance in the meridional velocity changes at the top of the ABL due to the momentum mixing across the ABL in the vertical direction. This causes the ABL to be more turbulent beyond seasonal time scales. This analysis also suggests that a simple parameterization is not sufficient to take the account of rectification effects on the atmospheric variables that are missing due to the lack of TIW representation in the coarse-resolution coupled general circulation models.     

A numerical world ocean general circulation model

This paper describes a numerical model of the world ocean based on the fully primitive equations. A “Standard” ocean state is introduced into the equations of the model and the perturbed thermodynamic variables are used in the modle’s calculations. Both a free upper surface and a bottom topography are included in the model and a sigma coordinate is used to normalize the model’s vertical component. The model has four unevenly-spaced layers and 4 × 5 horizontal resolution based on C-grid system. The finite-difference scheme of the model is designed to conserve the gross available energy in order to avoid fictitious energy generation or decay.The model has been tested in response to the annual mean surface wind stress, sea level air pressure and sea level air temperature as a preliminary step to its further improvement and its coupling with a global atmospheric general circulation model. Some of results, including currents, temperature and sea surface elevation simulated by the model are presented.     

Coupling an ocean wave model to an atmospheric general circulation model

A coupled model, consisting of an ocean wave model and an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM), is integrated under permanent July conditions. The wave model is forced by the AGCM wind stress, whereas the wind waves modify the AGCM surface fluxes of momentum, sensible and latent heat. We investigate the following aspects of the coupled model: how realistic are the wave fields, how strong is the coupling, and how sensitive is the atmospheric circulation to the spatially and temporally varying wave field. The wave climatology of the coupled model compares favorably with observational data. The interaction between the two models is largest (although weak) in the storm track in the Southern Hemisphere. Young windsea, which is associated with enhanced surface fluxes is generated mostly in the equatorward frontal area of an individual cyclone. However, the enhancement of the surface fluxes is too small to significantly modify the climatological mean atmospheric circulation.This paper was presented at the Second International Conference on Modelling of Global Climate Variability, held in Hamburg 7–11 September 1992 under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. Guest Editor for these papers is L. Dümenil     

The magnitude of global fresh-water transports of importance to ocean circulation

Water-vapor transport from low to high latitudes in a given ocean and from one ocean to another must be compensated by a net flow of salt through the sea. A comparison is presented which shows that water-vapor fluxes derived from meteorological information, from an atmospheric general circulation model and from a radiocarbon-calibrated ocean box model are in first-order agreement. Offprint requests to: WS Broecker     

Sensitivity of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation to the dynamical framework in an ocean general circulation model

The horizontal coordinate systems commonly used in most global ocean models are the spherical latitude–longitude grid and displaced poles, such as a tripolar grid. The effect of the horizontal coordinate system on Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is evaluated by using an OGCM (ocean general circulation model). Two experiments are conducted with the model—one using a latitude–longitude grid (referred to as Lat_1) and the other using a tripolar grid (referred to as Tri). The results show that Tri simulates a stronger North Atlantic deep water (NADW) than Lat_1, as more saline water masses enter the Greenland–Iceland–Norwegian (GIN) seas in Tri. The stronger NADW can be attributed to two factors. One is the removal of the zonal filter in Tri, which leads to an increasing of the zonal gradient of temperature and salinity, thus strengthening the north geostrophic flow. In turn, it decreases the positive subsurface temperature and salinity biases in the subtropical regions. The other may be associated with topography at the North Pole, because realistic topography is applied in the tripolar grid while the latitude–longitude grid employs an artificial island around the North Pole. In order to evaluate the effect of the filter on AMOC, three enhanced filter experiments are carried out. Compared to Lat_1, an enhanced filter can also augment NADW formation, since more saline water is suppressed in the GIN seas, but accumulated in the Labrador Sea, especially in experiment Lat_2_S, which is the experiment with an enhanced filter on salinity.     

Future ocean uptake of CO2: interaction between ocean circulation and biology

We discuss the potential variations of the biological pump that can be expected from a change in the oceanic circulation in the ongoing global warming. The biogeochemical model is based on the assumption of a perfect stoichiometric composition (Redfield ratios) of organic material. Upwelling nutrients are transformed into organic particles that sink to the deep ocean according to observed profiles. The physical circulation model is driven by the warming pattern as derived from scenario computations of a fully coupled ocean-atmosphere model. The amplitude of the warming is determined from the varying concentration of atmospheric CO₂. The model predicts a pronounced weakening of the thermohaline overturning. This is connected with a reduction of the transient uptake capacity of the ocean. It yields also a more effective removal of organic material from the surface which partly compensates the physical effects of solubility. Both effects are rather marginal for the evolution of atmospheric pCO₂. Running climate models and carbon cycle models separately seems to be justified. Received: 9 August 1995 / Accepted: 22 April 1996     

An intermediate model for large-scale ocean circulation studies

The design and purposes of an intermediate model are discussed along with fundamentals of the model and results of numerical experiments. The main purposes of the model are reconstructions of the schemes of the ocean large-scale circulation and paleocirculation. For these problems numerical effectiveness is the key factor. A novel feature is the parameterization of the side wall Ekman boundary layers which was introduced to enable the use of geostrophy for calculating baroclinic velocity. This approach of connecting the side frictional layers with a non-viscous interior is not model-specific and can be used in any model employing geostrophy in the interior. The method can facilitate the no-flux and no-slip boundary conditions at the side walls in such models. Preliminary numerical experiments with simple basin geometry and idealized forcing aimed at a comparison with primitive equation and planetary geostrophic models are carried out. A direct comparison with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) primitive equation model was performed for a quantitative test of the proposed model. The results of the experiments are discussed in the context of the applicability of intermediate models for studying ocean climate dynamics.     

海洋环流的长期变化和预估

IPCC第六次评估报告(AR6)于2021年8月在IPCC第一工作组第14次联合大会上得到审议通过,并得到了IPCC第54届全会接受和批准.文中主要对该报告第九章"海洋、冰冻圈和海平面"中与海洋环流的相关评估内容进行解读.与以前的IPCC报告相比,AR6进一步确认人类活动对海洋环流的影响,并基于最新的数值模式给出对未来...     

Global ocean circulation and equator-pole heat transport as a function of ocean GCM resolution

To determine whether resolution of smaller scales is necessary to simulate large-scale ocean climate correctly, I examine results from a global ocean GCM run with different horizontal grid spacings. The horizontal grid spacings span a range from coarse resolutions traditionally used in climate modeling to nearly the highest resolution attained with today's computers. The experiments include four cases employing 4°, 2°, 1° and 1/2° spacing in latitude and longitude, which were run with minimal differences among them, i.e., in a controlled experiment. Two additional cases, 1/2° spacing with a more scale-selective sub-gridscale mixing of heat and momentum, and approximate 1/2° spacing, are also included. The 1/2° run resolves most of the observed mesoscale eddy energy in the ocean. Artificial constraints on the model tend to minimize differences among the different resolution cases. Nevertheless, the simulations show significant changes as resolution increases. These changes generally but not always bring the model into better agreement with observations. Differences are typically more noticeable when comparing the 4° and 2° runs than when comparing the 2° and 1° runs or the 1° and 1/2° runs. A reasonable conclusion to draw for current studies with coupled ocean-atmosphere GCMs is that the ocean grid spacing could be set to about 1° to accrue the benefits of enhanced resolution without paying an excessively steep price in computer-time cost. The model's poleward heat transport at 1/2° grid spacing peaks at about 1 × 10¹⁵ W in the Northern Hemisphere and 0.5 × 10¹⁵ W in the Southern Hemisphere. These values are significantly below observations, a problem typical of ocean GCMs even when they are less constrained than in the present study. This present problem is alleviated somewhat in the 1/2° run. In this case, however, the eddies resolved by the model generally act to counter rather than to reinforce the heat transport of the mean flow. Improved heat transport may result less from enhanced resolution than from other changes made in this version of the model, such as more accurate wind forcing.     

On the onset of entrainment instability over the ocean

The marine atmospheric boundary layer is characterized by cool temperatures and high humidity. Clouds are observed over most of the oceans. It is generally accepted that these overcast cloud decks break up into scattered fragments due to cloud-top entrainment instability. That is, if the air above the boundary layer is sufficiently cool and dry relative to cloud top, the buoyancy flux will be directed upwards and entrainment can occur freely.A boundary-layer model is used to test the sensitivity of the model atmosphere to the various processes which promote the onset of cloud-top entrainment instability. It is found that the transition from a solid cloud deck to scattered cumulus clouds depends on a rate process. The cloud cover is sensitive to mesoscale variations in sea surface temperature only if the cloud-top inversion is sufficiently weak.     

The effect of barotropic shear on baroclinic instability Part I: Normal mode problem

The effect of barotropic shear in the basic flow on baroclinic instability is investigated using a linear multilevel quasi-geostrophic β-plane channel model and a nonlinear spherical primitive equation model. Barotropic shear has a profound effect on baroclinic instability. It reduces the growth rates of normal modes by severely restricting their structure, confirming earlier results with a two-layer model. Dissipation, in the form of Ekman pumping and Newtonian cooling, does not change the main characteristics of the effect of the shear on normal mode instability.Barotropic shear in the basic state, characterized by large shear vorticity with small horizontal curvature, also effects the nonlinear development of baroclinic waves. The shear limits the energy conversion from the zonal available potential energy to eddy energy, reducing the maximum eddy kinetic energy level reached by baroclinic waves. Barotropic shear, which controls the level of eddy activity, is a major factor which should be considered when parameterizing the eddy temperature and momentum fluxes induced by baroclinic waves in a climate model.     

Snowline instability in a general circulation model: application to Carboniferous glaciation

For over twenty years it has been known that energy balance models (EBMs) with snow-albedo feedback are characterized by unstable behavior in some areas of parameter space. This behavior leads to rapid changes in snow area due to small changes in forcing, and has been termed the small ice cap instability (SICI). It has never been clarified whether this behaviour reflects a real feature of the climate system or a limitation in EBMs. In this study we demonstrate that evidence for similar unstable behavior can also be found in an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM), using a realistic set of boundary conditions for the Carboniferous (300 Ma), one of the most extensive periods of glaciation in Earth history. When solar luminosity is sequentially lowered to near values appropriate for the Carboniferous, there is a discontinuous increase in summer snow area. The instability occurs in approximately the same area of parameter space as one previously found in an EBM. Analysis of selected fields indicates that the circulation is primarily affected in the area of snow increase; far-field effects are minimal. There is good agreement between model-generated summer snowcover and one reconstruction of Carboniferous ice cover. Although more work is required on this topic, our results provide increased support for the possibility that the snowline instability represents a real feature of the climate system, and that it may help explain some cases of glacial inception and abrupt transitions in Earth history.     

Internal secular variability in an ocean general circulation model

We describe results of an experiment in which the Hamburg Large-Scale Geostrophic Ocean General Circulation Model was driven by a spatially correlated white-noise freshwater flux superimposed on the climatological fluxes. In addition to the red-noise character of the oceanic response, the model exhibits pronounced variability in a frequency band around 320 years. The centers of action of this oscillation are the Southern Ocean and the Atlantic.This paper was presented at the International Conference on Modelling of Global Climate Change and Variability, held in Hamburg 11–15 September 1989 under the auspices of the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. Guest Editor for these papers is Dr. L. Dümenil.