Abstract
We study the variability and the evolution of oceanic deep convection in the northern North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas from 1850 to 2100 using an ensemble of 12 climate model simulations with EC- ...
Highlights
During the past decades, the idea of a weakening and even collapsing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as a response to global warming, and its possible impact on the climate of Western Europe (Manabe and Stouffer 1999), has been a recurrent and heated debate within the climate community (Bryden et al 2005)
This study focused on the variability and the possible future development of oceanic deep convection in the northern North Atlantic using an ensemble of 12 historical and future emission scenarios simulations with EC-Earth
A new index, that only takes into account the deep part of the convectively-mixed volume in March, was defined in order to study the evolution and the possible extinction of deep convection in the main convection sites of our model, namely Labrador Sea, GIN Seas and Scotland-Iceland region
Summary
The idea of a weakening and even collapsing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as a response to global warming, and its possible impact on the climate of Western Europe (Manabe and Stouffer 1999), has been a recurrent and heated debate within the climate community (Bryden et al 2005). The main argument for a possible decline of the AMOC is the reduction of deep wintertime convective mixing in the northern North Atlantic. Without this deep convective mixing, the renewal of the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) is compromised (Dickson and Brown 1994), which, as a result, compromises the sustainment of the northern bottom branch of the thermohaline circulation (THC) This branch of the THC acts as the buoyancy-driven contributor to the AMOC but is not its main driver. Koenigk of the AMOC, primarily through deep convective mixing in the Labrador Sea (Jungclaus et al 2005; Kuhlbrodt et al 2007; Gelderloos et al 2012). Because of the coupled nature of the involved mechanisms, coupled climate models are well suited to study the interactions between deep convection and other climate-related processes We address these issues by analyzing the data from a 12-member ensemble of historical and future climate simulations.
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