Monitoring the integrated deep meridional flow in the tropical North Atlantic: Long-term performance of a geostrophic array |
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| Institution: | 1. Leibniz-Institut für Meereswissenschaften, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, 24105 Kiel, Germany;2. National Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, Southampton, SO14 3ZH, UK;3. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0230, USA;4. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA;5. Institut für Umweltphysik, Otto Hahn Allee NW1, 28334 Bremen, Germany;1. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845, USA;2. Department of Physics & Astronomy and Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station 77845, TX, USA;3. Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics, University of Colorado, CO 80303, USA;4. Earth Sciences Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA;1. Department of Geosciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel;2. Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA;3. German Remote Sensing Data Center – German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany;4. Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, Germany;5. National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (I.N.G.V.), Osservatorio Etneo, Section of Catania, Catania, Italy |
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| Abstract: | As a component of the meridional overturning variability experiment in the tropical North Atlantic, a four-year-long time series of meridional transport of North Atlantic deep water has been obtained from moored end point measurements of density and bottom pressure. This study presents a quality assessment of the measurement elements. Rigorous pre- and post- deployment in situ calibration of the density sensors and subsequent data processing establish an accuracy of O(1.5 Sv) in internal transport in the 1200–5000 dbar range at subinertial time scales. A similar accuracy is reached in the bottom pressure-derived external transport fluctuations. However, for pressure, variability with periods longer than a deployment's duration (presently about one year) is not measurable. This effect is demonstrated using numerical simulations and a possible solution for detecting long-term external transport changes is presented. |
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