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Diapyknische Vermischungsprozesse in den Auftriebsgebieten des tropischen Atlantiks

Applicant Dr. Marcus Dengler
Subject Area Oceanography
Term from 2005 to 2011
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 12836769
 
Final Report Year 2013

Final Report Abstract

In the tropical regions of our planet, climate is very sensitive to changes in the oceans’ surface temperature. In the eastern equatorial Atlantic and in the oceanic region off Northwest Africa, sea surface temperature changes drastically on seasonal and year-to-year time scales, thereby affecting the distribution of precipitation over Africa and northeastern South America. Additionally, elevated primary production occurs in these two oceanic upwelling regions and they are known to be a source of greenhouse gases for the atmosphere. Although it was assumed that oceanic processes play an important role for the variability of sea surface temperature in those regions, the processes controlling sea surface temperature were not fully understood. In this project, we investigated the contribution of mixing by mechanical turbulence in the deeper ocean to the heat loss of the sea surface and to the flux of nutrients and greenhouse gases from the deep ocean to the sea surface. To obtain accurate datasets of turbulence from the deeper ocean, existing instrumentation was improved and a measurement campaign consisting of 20 research cruises was conducted. Our measurements showed that both upwelling regions are mixing hot spots and turbulence below the sea surface is much larger than in other regions of the ocean. The processes sustaining turbulence in the two regions, however, differ. While tidal currents interacting with the continental slope are the major energy source for turbulence in the upwelling region off Northwest Africa, zonal currents in the equatorial regions and large-scale oceanic equatorial waves feed energy to turbulence in the equatorial upwelling region. For the equatorial upwelling region, our data analysis showed that mixing below the sea surface is the dominant mechanism for cooling the sea surface in boreal summer, when sea surface temperature drops by about 6°C within two months. Similarly, mixing is also the controlling mechanism for transporting nutrients and greenhouse gases to the sea surface. Present climate models as well as general ocean circulation models are not capable of resolving mixing processes in the ocean. Thus, these processes need to be parameterized using other modeled variables. We tested several parameterizations used in today’s climate and ocean models against the data collected in the upwelling regions. The results showed that only few of the parameterizations have skill in accurately describing mixing in the ocean. Apart from advancing understanding of the physical processes occurring in the upwelling regions of the tropical Atlantic, our results will help improving climate and general ocean circulation models to a more realistic representation of sea surface temperature in the tropics, particularly in the upwelling regions. A somewhat unexpected development during the course of the project was the acceptance of our measurement techniques and observational strategies by the scientific community. The measurement program of this project was originally planned to include turbulence observations during eight field campaigns to the equatorial and the Mauritanian upwelling region. By the end of the project, the Emmy Noether junior research group had completed 20 field campaigns – more than twice as many as planned. On 26th October 2007, a press releases was issued by IFM-GEOMAR that was printed in several local newspapers in Germany. The title of the contribution in German language was “Kaltes Wasser am Äquator beeinflusst Monsun über Westafrika”. A second press release was issued on 16th November 2009 by GEOMAR. It was titled “Kleine Ursache – große Wirkung”. It was also adopted by several regional and nationwide newspapers in Germany. The text can be found online at http://www.geomar.de/news/article/kleine-ursache-grosse-wirkung-1/.

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