Vertical velocity estimates in the North Pacific using Argo floats

Abstract

Vertical velocity in the oceans is critical for maintenance of the structure of the main thermoclines and the transport of nutrients from deepwater towards the surface and thus is an important variable for understanding the dynamics of the ocean and the transport of scalar variables. In the mid 1970s the author was engaged in discussions with Tom Rossby about how SOFAR floats might be used to observe the vertical component of velocity. This paper in some sense follows on from those discussions almost 40 years later. In this paper the Argo array is used to compute the horizontal volume divergence in a control volume in the North Pacific. Divergence is found and this must be related to a volume flux through the base of the control volume. The implied vertical velocity is large and various tests are proposed to determine whether or not the estimate is plausible. The first test shows that a vertical velocity this large is necessary to close the salt budget. The second test shows that the vertical velocity balances about half of the observed heat divergence, the remainder is then accounted for by heat flux at the sea surface. Finally the time variable vertical velocity is computed and used to compute the evolution of the salt content in the control volume. Thus though the estimated vertical velocity is surprisingly large, it passes plausibility tests.