Stirring by deep cyclones and the evolution of Denmark strait overflow water observed at line W

Abstract

Shipboard velocity and water property data from 18 transects across the North Atlantic Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) near 40 °N are examined to study the evolution of the Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW) component of the DWBC and mixing between DSOW and the interior. The examined transects along Line W – which stretches from the continental shelf south of New England to Bermuda – were made between 1994 and 2014. The shipboard data comprise measurements at regular stations of velocity from lowered acoustic Doppler current profilers, CTD profiles and trace gas chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) concentrations from bottle samples at discrete depths. Comparison of the Line W velocity sections with concurrent sea surface height maps from satellite altimetry indicates that large cyclones in the deep ocean accompany intermittent quasi-stationary meander troughs in the Gulf Stream path at Line W. A composite of 5 velocity sections along Line W suggests that a typical cyclone reaches swirl speeds of greater than 30cms−1 at 3400-m depth and has a radius (distance between the center and the maximum velocity) of 75km. Tracer data suggest that these cyclones affect not only the deep velocity structure along Line W, but also provide a mechanism for water exchange between the DWBC's DSOW and the interior. Vigorous exchange is corroborated by a mismatch in the CFC-11:CFC-12 and CFC-113:CFC-12 ratio ages calculated for DSOW at Line W. During the most recent 5-year period (2010–2014), a decrease in DSOW density has been driven by warming (increasing by almost 0.1°C) as salinity has increased only slightly (by 0.003, which is close to the 0.002 uncertainty of the measurements). The abyssal ocean offshore of the DWBC and Gulf Stream and deeper than 3000-m depth has freshened at a rate of 6×10−4yr−1 since at least 2003. Density here remains nearly unchanged over this period, due to temperature compensation, though a linear cooling trend in the abyssal ocean (to compensate the freshening) is not statistically significant.