Abstract
A two-dimensional spherical model of the thermohaline circulation has been constructed that may be integrated both with and without the use of a convective adjustment scheme in order to simulate the internal variability that may be characteristic of the overturning flow. The behavior of the model is governed by several nondimensional control parameters: thermal and haline Rayleigh numbers, Prandtl number, Lewis number, and the ratio of horizontal and vertical diffusivities. Mixed boundary conditions are employed in our analyses as in previous studies based upon somewhat different model systems.
Our focus in the analyses with the new model is on the nature of the internal variability that is supported when the two Rayleigh numbers are set to sufficiently high values so as to induce a mean circulation which matches that of the modern Atlantic basin. Our purpose is to understand whether the internal variability exhibited by the model in this region of parameter space might bear any resemblance to the long term variability of climate in the North Atlantic that has been inferred on the basis of the analysis of oxygen isotopic records from Greenland ice cores, one component of which has come to be known as the “Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations”(Dansgaard et al.,1984, Oeschger et al.,1984).
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Sakai, K., Peltier, W.R. (1993). Oscillatory Modes of Behavior in a Simple Model of the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation. In: Peltier, W.R. (eds) Ice in the Climate System. NATO ASI Series, vol 12. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85016-5_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85016-5_26
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