The Roles of Wind and Sea Ice in Driving the Deglacial Change in the Southern Ocean Upwelling: A Modeling Study

Gagan Mandal, Shih-Yu Lee and Jia-Yuh Yu
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Gagan Mandal: Taiwan International Graduate Program, Earth System Science Program, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan
Shih-Yu Lee: Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan
Jia-Yuh Yu: Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Central University, Taoyuan 32001, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: The Southern Ocean (SO) played a fundamental role in the deglacial climate system by exchanging carbon-rich deep ocean water with the surface. The contribution of the SO’s physical mechanisms toward improving our understanding of SO upwelling’s dynamical changes is developing. Here, we investigated the simulated transient SO atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice evolution during the last deglaciation in a fully coupled Earth system model. Our results showed that decreases in SO upwelling followed the weakening of the Southern Hemisphere surface westerlies, wind stress forcing, and Antarctic sea ice coverage from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Heinrich Stadial 1 and the Younger Dryas. Our results support the idea that the SO upwelling is primarily driven by wind stress forcing. However, during the onset of the Holocene, SO upwelling increased while the strength of the wind stress decreased. The Antarctic sea ice change controlled the salt and freshwater fluxes, ocean density, and buoyancy flux, thereby influencing the SO’s dynamics. Our study highlighted the dynamic linkage of the Southern Hemisphere westerlies, ocean, and sea ice in the SO’s latitudes. Furthermore, it emphasized that zonal wind stress forcing and buoyancy forcing control by sea ice together regulate the change in the SO upwelling.

Keywords: Southern Ocean; upwelling; sea ice; buoyancy forcing; wind stress; last deglaciation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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