This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint.
Downloads
Authors
Abstract
The Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is key to the redistribution of heat and is projected to weaken due to climate change. The RAPID mooring array observes the strength of the MOC, showing an overall weakening of 1.4 Sv/decade from 2004–2022. However, the significance of this trend is controversial. Here we consider the RAPID observations in a signal-to-noise framework to understand where low frequency, climatic signals are strongest. There is a strong signal in Lower North Atlantic Deepwater (LNADW) transports. In contrast, we find little signal and significant noise in Ekman tranpsorts. We remove the influence of the Ekman transport on MOC and LNADW estimates, reducing the noise by 30% and 22% respectively. We find a simple model of LNADW has a comparable signal-to-noise ratio as the full MOC estimate. Understanding the sources of ‘noise’ and ‘signal’ is key to timely detection of climatic change in the MOC.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X5ND8G
Subjects
Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Keywords
Climate Change Detection, meridional overturning circulation, Ocean Observing
Dates
Published: 2024-07-27 03:18
Last Updated: 2024-07-27 07:18
Older Versions
License
CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data Availability (Reason not available):
Data from the RAPID MOC monitoring project are funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and are freely available from www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc.
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.