ClimaTea Lecture: "Overturning in the North Atlantic: new observations, new ideas, lingering questions"

Date: 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Location: 

HUCE Seminar Room

Speaker: Dr. Susan Lozier (Duke University)

Abstract:

The global overturning of ocean waters involves the equatorward transport of cold, deep waters and the poleward transport of warm, near-surface waters. Such movement creates a net poleward transport of heat that, in partnership with the atmosphere, establishes the global and regional climates. Although oceanographers have long assumed that a reduction in deep water formation at high latitudes in the North Atlantic translates into a slowing of the ocean’s overturning, observational and modeling studies over the past decade have called this assumed linkage into question. Understanding this linkage is crucial to efforts aimed at predicting the consequences of the warming and freshening of high-latitude surface waters to the climate system. The observational basis for linking water mass formation with the ocean’s meridional overturning will be the focus of my talk.

overturning_lozier_2012.pdf2.75 MB