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Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss
The heat contained in the ocean (OHC) dominates the Earth’s energy budget and hence represents a fundamental parameter for understanding climate changes. However, paucity of observational data hampers our knowledge on OHC variability, particularly in abyssal areas. Here, we analyze water characteris...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6063911/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30054494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29343-4 |
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author | Artale, Vincenzo Falcini, Federico Marullo, Salvatore Bensi, Manuel Kokoszka, Florian Iudicone, Daniele Rubino, Angelo |
author_facet | Artale, Vincenzo Falcini, Federico Marullo, Salvatore Bensi, Manuel Kokoszka, Florian Iudicone, Daniele Rubino, Angelo |
author_sort | Artale, Vincenzo |
collection | PubMed |
description | The heat contained in the ocean (OHC) dominates the Earth’s energy budget and hence represents a fundamental parameter for understanding climate changes. However, paucity of observational data hampers our knowledge on OHC variability, particularly in abyssal areas. Here, we analyze water characteristics, observed during the last three decades in the abyssal Ionian Sea (Eastern Mediterranean), where two competing convective sources of bottom water exist. We find a heat storage of ~1.6 W/m(2) – twice that assessed globally in the same period – exceptionally well-spread throughout the local abyssal layers. Such an OHC accumulation stems from progressive warming and salinification of the Eastern Mediterranean, producing warmer near-bottom waters. We analyze a new process that involves convectively-generated waters reaching the abyss as well as the triggering of a diapycnal mixing due to rough bathymetry, which brings to a warming and thickening of the bottom layer, also influencing water-column potential vorticity. This may affect the prevailing circulation, altering the local cyclonic/anticyclonic long-term variability and hence precondition future water-masses formation and the redistribution of heat along the entire water-column. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6063911 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60639112018-07-31 Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss Artale, Vincenzo Falcini, Federico Marullo, Salvatore Bensi, Manuel Kokoszka, Florian Iudicone, Daniele Rubino, Angelo Sci Rep Article The heat contained in the ocean (OHC) dominates the Earth’s energy budget and hence represents a fundamental parameter for understanding climate changes. However, paucity of observational data hampers our knowledge on OHC variability, particularly in abyssal areas. Here, we analyze water characteristics, observed during the last three decades in the abyssal Ionian Sea (Eastern Mediterranean), where two competing convective sources of bottom water exist. We find a heat storage of ~1.6 W/m(2) – twice that assessed globally in the same period – exceptionally well-spread throughout the local abyssal layers. Such an OHC accumulation stems from progressive warming and salinification of the Eastern Mediterranean, producing warmer near-bottom waters. We analyze a new process that involves convectively-generated waters reaching the abyss as well as the triggering of a diapycnal mixing due to rough bathymetry, which brings to a warming and thickening of the bottom layer, also influencing water-column potential vorticity. This may affect the prevailing circulation, altering the local cyclonic/anticyclonic long-term variability and hence precondition future water-masses formation and the redistribution of heat along the entire water-column. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6063911/ /pubmed/30054494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29343-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Artale, Vincenzo Falcini, Federico Marullo, Salvatore Bensi, Manuel Kokoszka, Florian Iudicone, Daniele Rubino, Angelo Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title | Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title_full | Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title_fullStr | Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title_full_unstemmed | Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title_short | Linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the Eastern Mediterranean abyss |
title_sort | linking mixing processes and climate variability to the heat content distribution of the eastern mediterranean abyss |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6063911/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30054494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29343-4 |
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