Ph.D. Program in Oceanography and Global Change at the Canary Islands, Spain
This coming Friday, 6th March at 13:00 in Taliarte, guest speaker from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (UK), Dra. Eleanor Frajka-Williams, will give a presentation entitled “Measuring the large-scale ocean circulation: Variability, connectivity and new approaches”, which will focus on the following subject matter:
The large-scale meridional overturning circulation (MOC) has been measured at 26°N by the RAPID/MOCHA arrays since 2004, producing continuous records of the variability of overturning transports. From these, we have learned that (i) the overturning fluctuates on timescales of days to a decade, (ii) heat transport variability is dominated by geostrophic volume transport, (iii) interannual variations are larger than those seen in most coupled climate models, (iv) low frequency variability appears consistent with our understanding of the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV). With the deployment of observing arrays at other latitudes (16°N, OSNAP, 34.5°S and 45°N), we can begin to address questions about the meridional connectivity of the large-scale ocean circulation. In this talk, I'll give a brief overview of the findings from RAPID 26°N, then discuss efforts using new observational approaches to broaden our understanding of the large-scale overturning.
All are welcome to attend and light refreshments will be served following question time.