Identification

Title

Internal variability dominates over externally forced ocean circulation changes seen through CFCS

Abstract

Observations of oceanic transient tracers have indicated that the circulation in the Southern Ocean has changed in recent decades, potentially driven by changes in external climate forcing. Here, we use the CESM Large Ensemble to analyze changes in two oceanic tracers that are affected by ocean circulation: the partial pressure of chlorofluorocarbon-12 (pCFC12) and the idealized model tracer Ideal Age (IAGE) over the 1991 to 2005 period. The small ensemble mean change in IAGE suggests that there has been very little externally forced change in Southern Ocean circulation over this period, in contrast to strong internal variability. Further, our analysis implies that real-world observations of changes in pCFC12 may not be a robust way to characterize externally driven changes in Southern Ocean circulation because of the large internal variability in pCFC12 changes exhibited by the individual ensemble members.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7736v56

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2020-05-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact