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.