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Title: Routes of the Upper Branch of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation according to an Ocean State Estimate
Abstract

The origins of the upper branch of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) are traced with backward‐in‐time Lagrangian trajectories, quantifying the partition of volume transport between different routes of entry from the Indo‐Pacific into the Atlantic. Particles are advected by the velocity field from a recent release of “Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean” (ECCOv4). This global time‐variable velocity field is a dynamically consistent interpolation of over 1 billion oceanographic observations collected between 1992 and 2015. Of the 13.6 Sverdrups (1 Sv = 106 m3/s) flowing northward across 6°S, 15% enters the Atlantic from Drake Passage, 35% enters from the straits between Asia and Australia (Indonesian Throughflow), and 49% comes from the region south of Australia (Tasman Leakage). Because of blending in the Agulhas region, water mass properties in the South Atlantic are not a good indicator of origin.

 
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Award ID(s):
1634128
NSF-PAR ID:
10375581
Author(s) / Creator(s):
 ;  ;  
Publisher / Repository:
DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume:
47
Issue:
18
ISSN:
0094-8276
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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