Delayed baroclinic response of the Antarctic circumpolar current to surface wind stress |
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| Authors: | XiaoYi Yang RuiXin Huang Jia Wang and DongXiao Wang |
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| Institution: | (1) LED, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China;(2) Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts, MA 02543, USA;(3) NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA |
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| Abstract: | The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) responds to the surface windstress via two processes, i.e., the instant barotropic process and the delayed baroclinic process. This study focuses on the baroclinic instability mechanism in ACC, which was less reported in the literatures. Results show that the strengthening of surface zonal windstress causes the enhanced tilting of the isopycnal surface, leading to more intense baroclinic instability. Simultaneously, the mesoscale eddies resulting from the baro- clinic instability facilitate the transformation of mean potential energy to eddy energy, which causes the remarkable decrease of the ACC volume transport with the 2-year lag time. This delayed negative cor- relation between the ACC transport and the zonal windstress may account for the steadiness of the ACC transport during last two decades. |
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| Keywords: | Antarctic Circumpolar Current zonal windstress baroclinic instability mesoscale eddy |
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