Drake Passage & Southern Ocean

Transport and variability of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in Drake PassageRepeat hydrography on WOCE section SR1b from 1993 to 2000

Comparison between Drake Passage (SR1) and Australia-Antarctica (SR3) sections

Section integrated geostrophic transport: SR3 Australia to Antarctica, relative to the bottom except near the southern boundary where the reference level is placed between westward flowing newly formed AABW and older CDW above (Rintoul 2001); SR1 Drake Passage, relative to the bottom.

Bering Strait throughflow = 1 Sv, Coachman and Aagaard, 1988
Indonesian thoughflow, av = 10 Sv, Cresswell et al., 1993 and Meyers et al., 1995

Comparison to SR3 (Rintoul and Sokolov 2001, JGR in press) :

SR3 is a much longer section than SR1 (23° versus 6° of latitude)
there is a much richer frontal structure at SR3
at SR3 the Subantarctic Front carries the majority of the eastward flux, but on SR1 this is partitioned evenly between the Subantarctic Front and Polar Front
at SR3 the Tasman Sea Outflow and Subantrarctic zone recirculation lead to much higher variability than observed on SR1
the net baroclinc transport through SR3 is 147±10 Sv and through SR1 is 136.7±7.8 Sv. The difference accounts for the Indonesian and Bering Strait throughflows and so the barotropic transport through SR3 and SR1 would have to be the same (b).

Abstract

Introduction

Net average baroclinic transport in the Drake Passage

Flux, AABW temperature and frontal position variability

Transport in neutral density layers

LADCP results

Stuart A. Cunningham, Steven G. Alderson, Brian A. King and Mark A. Brandon

Profiling floats at SOC

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Last Modified: 12/06/02