Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Oceanography
Human Health Benefits of the Minamata Convention on Mercury
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Minamata Convention is a legally-binding international treaty aimed at reducing the anthropogenic release of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. However, its human health benefit has not been quantified on a global scale. Here we evaluate the Convention’s benefit by a coupled climate-atmosphere-land-ocean-ecosystem model and a human mercury exposure component that considers all food categories. We [...]
Projections of global delta land loss from sea-level rise in the 21st century
Published: 2020-05-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
River deltas will likely experience significant land loss because of relative sea-level rise (RSLR), but predictions have not been tested against observations. Here, we use global data of RSLR and river sediment supply to build a model of delta response to RSLR for 6,402 deltas, representing 86% of global delta land. We validate this model against delta land area change observations from [...]
Unexpected meteotsunamis prior to the Typhoon Wipha
Published: 2020-03-23
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
On October 15, 2013, unexpected meteotsunamis occurred prior to Typhoon Wipha located the distance of ~1,100 km from the center of the cyclone to the Tokyo bay. The occurrences were observed around the east coast of Japan coincidentally with atmospheric pressure disturbances induced by this typhoon. The observed wave height of meteotsunamis was up to ~0.5 m with the pressure fluctuation of ~2 hPa [...]
Rapid Tidal Marsh Development in Anthropogenic Backwaters
Published: 2020-03-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Tidal marsh restoration and creation has been proposed as a tool to build coastal resilience in the face of rising sea level and increasing intensity of coastal storms. However, it is unclear what conditions within constructed settings will lead to the successful establishment of tidal marsh. We used sediment cores and historical geospatial data in the tidal freshwater Hudson River to identify [...]
Drivers of Local Ocean Heat Content Variability in ECCOv4
Published: 2020-02-06
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Variation in upper ocean heat content is a critical factor in understanding global climate variability. By using temperature anomaly budgets in a physically consistent ocean state estimate we describe the balance between atmospheric forcing and ocean transport mechanisms for different depth horizons and at varying temporal and spatial resolutions. The processes controlling local variations in [...]
Centrifugal and symmetric instability during Ekman adjustment of the bottom boundary layer
Published: 2020-02-04
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Flow along isobaths of a sloping lower boundary generates an across-isobath Ekman transport in the bottom boundary layer. When this Ekman transport is down the slope it causes convective mixing --- much like a downfront wind in the surface boundary layer --- destroying stratification and potential vorticity. In this manuscript we show how this can lead to the development of a forced centrifugal [...]
On the potential of linked-basin tidal power plants: an operational and coastal modelling assessment
Published: 2020-02-02
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Single-basin tidal range power plants have the advantage of predictable energy outputs, but feature non-generation periods in every tidal cycle. Linked-basin tidal power systems can reduce this variability and consistently generate power. However, as a concept the latter are under-studied with limited information on their performance relative to single-basin designs. In addressing this, we [...]
Abyssal Circulation Driven By Near-Boundary Mixing: Water Mass Transformations and Interior Stratification
Published: 2020-01-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The emerging view of the abyssal circulation is that it is associated with bottom enhanced mixing, which results in downwelling in the stratified ocean interior and upwelling in a bottom boundary layer along the insulating and sloping seafloor. In the limit of slowly-varying vertical stratification and topography, however, boundary layer theory predicts that these up- and down-slope flows largely [...]
Estimation of surface and deep flows from sparse SSH observations of geostrophic ocean turbulence using Deep Learning
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Satellite altimeters provide global observations of sea surface height (SSH) and present a unique dataset for advancing our theoretical understanding of upper ocean dynamics and monitoring its variability. Considering that mesoscale SSH patterns of 50--300 km in size can evolve on timescales comparable to or shorter than satellite return periods, it is challenging to accurately reconstruct the [...]
Spatiotemporal correlation analysis of noise-derived seismic body waves with ocean wave climate and microseism sources
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seismic signals can be extracted from ambient noise wavefields by the correlation technique. Recently, a prominent P‐type phase was observed from teleseismic noise correlations in the secondary microseism period band. The phase is named Pdmc in this paper, corresponding to its origin from the interference between the direct P waves transmitting through the deep mantle and the core (P and PKPab [...]
Local and remote influences on the heat content of Southern Ocean mode water formation regions.
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Southern Ocean (SO) is a crucial region for the global ocean uptake of heat and carbon. There are large uncertainties in the observations of fluxes of heat and carbon between the atmosphere and the ocean mixed layer, which leads to large uncertainties in the amount entering into the global overturning circulation. In order to better understand where and when fluxes of heat and momentum have [...]
Bayesian Models for Deriving Biogeochemical Information from Satellite Ocean Color
Published: 2019-12-04
Subjects: Life Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In this study, we present Bayesian machine learning approaches to predict the spectral phytoplankton absorption coefficient - a proxy of phytoplankton biomass - from top of atmosphere measurements of ocean color. This presents a significant advance in ocean color research as it permits the bypassing of conventional atmospheric correction, which is notoriously challenging in optically complex [...]
River inflow dominates methane emissions in an Arctic coastal system
Published: 2019-10-13
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geochemistry, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Measurements of greenhouse gases in Arctic waters are strongly biased toward low-ice summer conditions, with few observations during periods of seasonal ice retreat. We present a year-round time series of dissolved methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), along with targeted observations during ice melt of CH4 and carbon dioxide (CO2) in a river and estuary adjacent to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, [...]
Skillful multiyear predictions of ocean acidification in the California Current System
Published: 2019-10-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The California Current System (CCS) sustains economically valuable fisheries and is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification, due to the natural upwelling of corrosive waters that affect ecosystem function. Marine resource managers in the CCS could benefit from advanced knowledge of ocean acidity on multiyear timescales. We use a novel suite of retrospective forecasts with an initialized [...]
Relative Dispersion in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Published: 2019-10-08
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present an analysis of relative dispersion and associated metrics from the RAFOS float observations collected during the Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean (DIMES) along with a set of particles from an eddy-resolving numerical model that simulated the flow in the DIMES region. Both RAFOS floats and numerical particles show correlated motions and isotropic pair [...]