Seasonal to interannual upper-ocean variability in the Drake Passage
Clicks: 2
ID: 293977
2003
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This
article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score —
reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
Reader Engagement
Steady Performance
0.3
/100
2 views
0 readers
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
SteadyRanked #299 of 1,397 articles by views in journal of marine research
Most read
Least read
Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,397 in total.
Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet mintedCreate a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.
5
SUSD
one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
Year-round monitoring of the upper-ocean temperature variability in Drake Passage has been undertaken since September 1996 through repeat expendable bathythermograph (XBT) surveys. The closely spaced measurements (6‐ 15 km apart) provide the e rst multi-year time series for examining seasonal to interannual variability in this Southern Ocean choke point. While the temperature sections reveal the seasonal variability in water mass formation of the upper layer, there was no seasonal signal evident below 200 m. Similarly, there was little seasonal cycle evident in the position of the Subantarctic Front, the Polar Front and the Southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current Front associated with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) in Drake Passage. Mesoscale eddy features are readily identie able in the XBT sections and in some sparse salinity sections, as distinct alternating bands separated by near-vertical isotherms of cold and warm core temperatures. The eddies can also be tracked in concurrent maps of altimetric sea surface height, with time scales of ;35 days and diameters of 50‐ 100 km, following a north to north-east trajectory with the main path of ACC e ow through Drake Passage. Both the XBT and the altimetric data suggest the eddies are mainly cone ned to the Antarctic Polar Frontal Zone. To determine transport, an empirical relationship is derived between upper ocean XBT temperature and a baroclinic mass transport function from historical CTD casts collected in the Drake Passage. While in the temporal mean the strongest eastward transport is associated with the three major fronts in the ACC, the individual cruises strongly suggest a banded nature to the e ow through the passage. Some, although not all, of the eastward and westward bands of transport can be attributed to the presence of eddies. The high spatial resolution of the XBT measurements is more capable of distinguishing these countere ows than the typical 50 km resolution of historical hydrographic sections across Drake Passage. Commensurate with the position of the fronts, no real seasonal signal in Drake Passage transport is discernible, although there is substantial variability on interannual time scales. The Drake Passage XBT transport time series is strongly correlated to both zonal wind stress and wind stress curl in the southeast Pacie c Ocean.
| Reference Key |
openalex_W2124723024
Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using
SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
|
|---|---|
| Authors | Janet Sprintall |
| Journal | journal of marine research |
| Year | 2003 |
| DOI |
10.1357/002224003321586408
|
| URL | |
| Keywords | Keywords not found |
Citations
No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.