HR: 16:00h
AN: PP34B-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Partitioning of the Modern Oceanic Mass and Heat Fluxes
AU: * Wunsch, C
EM: cwunsch@mit.edu
AF: Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 54-1524, Cambridge, MA 02139 United States
AB: The modern partitioning of mass and heat fluxes between ocean basins and hemispheres is highly structured, and raises interesting questions about how they may have been distributed in the past. Today, oceanic heat fluxes are asymmetric about the equator, but the combined oceanic plus atmospheric heat flux (the real `global conveyor') is, within error bars, almost indistinguishable from perfect antisymmetry. That is, the total poleward enthalpy flux is nearly the same in both hemispheres despite the very different continental and oceanic distributions. If this antisymmetry is not a coincidence, it implies that shifts in oceanic heat budgets will be compensated by atmospheric ones, and vice-versa. The comparatively minor oceanic contribution to high latitude heat fluxes (in large part a function of the diminishing oceanic surface area with high northern latitude) makes it an implausible trigger of massive climate change. Speculation about past oceanic and atmospheric heat flux pathways has to account for global radiation balance, and for the multiplicity of mechanisms and routes by which the coupled system can move and balance heat and moisture.
UR: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch
DE: 4928 Global climate models (1626, 3337)
DE: 4938 Interhemispheric phasing
DE: 4962 Thermohaline
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005