Ocean circulation
Interactive freshwater stretches AMOC’s slow beat
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Fixing freshwater flux in CESM1 inserts a ~30-year AMOC peak; coupling precipitation, evaporation, and ice melt lengthens the cycle via Labrador Sea salinity.
How this study connects
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Evidence for the claim as stated.
Fixing freshwater flux in CESM1 inserts a ~30-year AMOC peak; coupling precipitation, evaporation, and ice melt lengthens the cycle via Labrador Sea salinity.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Computational / modelling — CESM1 preindustrial control versus a partially coupled run with prescribed climatological freshwater flux
- N
- 1,400-year coupled control and 350-year prescribed-FWF experiment
- Population
- Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in CESM1
- Outcome
- Interactive freshwater flux lengthens low-frequency AMOC variability via Labrador Sea salinity persistence
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Inspect source passages
Interactive freshwater stretches AMOC’s slow beat
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
The control is a 1,400-year fully coupled CESM1 simulation.
The control simulation is a 1,400‐year fully coupled simulation (CPL) available from NCAR, forced with preindustrial carbon dioxide levels and solar insolation.
What does interactive FWF do overall?
Hence, the comparison reveals that the inclusion of interactive FWF lengthens the AMOC variability on the multidecadal timescale and suppresses the ∼30‐year AMOC variability.
Key findings
Coupled AMOC power sits in a 50–100-year band. Without interactive FWF a sharp ~30-year peak appears and density anomalies reverse in ~15 years. Interactive FWF lengthens positive Labrador density by ~50% (17 to 25 years) via evaporation and Irminger salinity advection.
Methodology
Authors compared a 1400-year preindustrial CESM1 control with a 350-year partially coupled run that prescribes daily-climatology freshwater flux, then diagnosed AMOC PC-1 spectra and Labrador Sea density budgets.
Limitations
This is one model’s internal variability under preindustrial forcing, not an observational AMOC spectrum; the first 50 FWFIX years are spin-up; periods <15 years were filtered.
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