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Abstract This study examines the generation of warm spiral structures (referred to as spiral streamers here) over Gulf Stream warm-core rings. Satellite sea surface temperature imagery shows spiral streamers forming after warmer water from the Gulf Stream or newly formed warm-core rings impinges onto old warm-core rings and then intrudes into the old rings. Field measurements in April 2018 capture the vertical structure of a warm spiral streamer as a shallow lens of low-density water winding over an old ring. Observations also show subduction on both sides of the spiral streamer, which carries surface waters downward. Idealized numerical model simulations initialized with observed water-mass densities reproduce spiral streamers over warm-core rings and reveal that their formation is a nonlinear submesoscale process forced by mesoscale dynamics. The negative density anomaly of the intruding water causes a density front at the interface between the intruding water and surface ring water, which, through thermal wind balance, drives alocalanticyclonic flow. The pressure gradient and momentum advection of the local interfacial flow push the intruding water toward the ring center. The large-scale anticyclonic flow of the ring and the radial motion of the intruding water together form the spiral streamer. The observed subduction on both sides of the spiral streamer is part of the secondary cross-streamer circulation resulting from frontogenesis on the stretching streamer edges. The surface divergence of the secondary circulation pushes the side edges of the streamer away from each other, widens the warm spiral on the surface, and thus enhances its surface signal.
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Frontal Subduction of the Mid-Atlantic Bight Shelf Water at the Onshore Edge of a Warm-Core Ring
This work studies the subduction of the shelf water along the onshore edge of a warm-core ring (WCR) that impinges on the edge of the Mid-Atlantic Bight continental shelf. The dynamical analysis is based on observations by satellites and from the Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array observatory as well as idealized numerical model simulations. They together show that frontogenesis-induced submesoscale frontal subduction with order-one Rossby and Froude numbers occurs on the onshore edge of the ring. The subduction flow results from the onshore migration of the WCR that intensifies the density front on the interface of the ring and shelf waters. The subduction is a part of the cross-front secondary circulation trying to relax the intensifying density front. The dramatically different physical and biogeochemical properties of the ring and shelf waters provide a great opportunity to visualize the subduction phenomenon. Entrained by the ring-edge current, the subducted shelf water is subsequently transported offshore below a surface layer of ring water and alongside of the surface-visible shelf-water streamer. It explains the historical observations of isolated subsurface packets of shelf water along the ring periphery in the slope sea. Model-based estimate suggests that this type of subduction-associated subsurface cross-shelfbreak transport of the shelf water could be substantial relative to other major forms of shelfbreak water exchange. This study also proposes that outward spreading of the ring-edge front by the frontal subduction may facilitate entrainment of the shelf water by the ring-edge current and enhances the shelf-water streamer transport at the shelf edge.
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- PAR ID:
- 10081331
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
- Volume:
- 123
- ISSN:
- 2169-9275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JC013794
