Intense nutrient upwelling and PV mixing in oceanic anti-cyclones caused by submesoscale instabilities

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Liam Brannigan, University of Oxford
• Wednesday 10 June 2015, 14:00-15:00
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 330B.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Dave Munday.

If external to BAS, please email the organizer in advance for building access

Numerous observations from the Norwegian Seas to the Southern Ocean show the presence of anomalously high biological activity in anti-cyclonic eddies. This high productivity suggests that upwelling of nutrient-rich water from the thermocline occurs inside anti-cyclonic eddies. However, this upwelling is not captured by existing climate models and so hinders efforts to close the carbon budget. The upwelling process is considered here from a potential vorticity viewpoint. High resolution numerical simulations show intense upwelling of high PV filaments from the thermocline in anti-cyclonic eddies and that the most likely cause of this upwelling is symmetric instability. It is shown that anti-cyclonic eddies are highly unstable to symmetric instability and that this induces mixing of potential vorticity along stratification surfaces with cyclogenesis effects analogous to those in the troposphere.

This talk is part of the British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biology
• British Antarctic Survey
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 330B
• Cambridge Environment
• Climate Science Seminars within Cambridge
• Featured lists
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• ME Seminar
• Queens' College Politics Society
• School of Physical Sciences
• Talks related to atmosphere and ocean dynamics and climate science
• my_list
• ob366-ai4er
• other talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.