Impact of ocean resolution and mean state on the rate of AMOC weakening

Abstract

We examine the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in response to increasing CO_2 at different horizontal resolutions in a state-of-the-art climate model and in a small ensemble of models with differing resolutions. There is a strong influence of the ocean mean state on the AMOC weakening: models with a more saline western subpolar gyre have a greater formation of deep water there. This makes the AMOC more susceptible to weakening from an increase in CO_2 since weakening ocean heat transports weaken the contrast between ocean and atmospheric temperatures and hence weaken the buoyancy loss. In models with a greater proportion of deep water formation further north (in the Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian basin), deep-water formation can be maintained by shifting further north to where there is a greater ocean-atmosphere temperature contrast. We show that ocean horizontal resolution can have an impact on the mean state, and hence AMOC weakening. In the models examined, those with higher resolutions tend to have a more westerly location of the North Atlantic Current and stronger subpolar gyre. This likely leads to a greater impact of the warm, saline subtropical Atlantic waters on the western subpolar gyre resulting in greater dense water formation there. Although there is some improvement of the higher resolution models over the lower resolution models in terms of the mean state, both still have biases and it is not clear which biases are the most important for influencing the AMOC strength and response to increasing CO_2.