Ventilation of the North Pacific Ocean: Water exchange between subtropical and tropical gyres |
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Authors: | Peng Ma-chuan Feng Ming Lian Shu-min Bai Hong Hu Dun-xin Jiao Zhi-xin |
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Institution: | (1) Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 266071 Qingdao, China;(2) China Meteorology Administration, 100082 Beijing, China |
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Abstract: | Ventilation or water exchange between the subtropical and tropic Pacific is studied with a simple none-thermodynamic two-and-half
layer model. The shallow upper layer is assumed to communicate with its lower counterpart by entrainment and detrainment at
ratesW
e andW
d. Trenberth wind stress data (Trenberth Data Center, 1995) are chosen to drive the upper moving ocean to obtain a stable state.
The results show that the subtropical and tropic Pacific exchange water in two ways. One is the direct exchanging by which
the surface water in the mid-latitude goes down and moves to the tropical region in the subsurface layer and upwells back
to the Ekman layer and finally moves northward to complete its journey; and the other is the way of detour, by which water
in the subtropical Pacific moves first to the western boundary region along geostrophic flow contours and goes down to the
tropic region as southward boundary currents. These two ways contribute almost the same amount to the water exchange between
the subtropical and tropic Pacific gyres although the spatial scale in the latter is ten times greater than that of the former.
LPS's (Luyten et al., 1983) ventilation theory is reviewed to give a clear picture of how the water exchange in large scale
has been studied and the numerical results in this paper are compared with both the conclusions of such analysis theory and
some previous observation (tritium survey) reports.
Contribution No. 3395 from the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Project 49576282 supported by NSFC. |
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Keywords: | ventilation water exchange subtropical and tropic Pacific numerical model |
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