Tropical extra-tropical thermocline water mass exchanges in the Community Climate Model v.3 Part I: the Atlantic Ocean

摘要

The climatological annual mean tropical-extra-tropical pathways ofthermocline waters in the Atlantic Ocean are investigated with the NCAR CCSMnumerical coupled model. Results from three numerical experiments areanalyzed: Two are fully coupled runs with different spatial resolution (T42and T85) for the atmospheric component. The third numerical experiment is anocean-only run forced by NCEP winds and fluxes. Results show that thedifferent atmospheric resolutions have a significant impact on the subductionpathways in the Atlantic because of how the wind field is represented. Thesesimulation results also show that the water subducted at the subtropicsreaching the EUC is entirely from the South Atlantic. The coupled modelability to simulate the STCs is discussed.