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Response of the South Atlantic circulation to an abrupt collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

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Abstract

The South Atlantic response to a collapse of the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is investigated in the ECHAM5/MPI-OM climate model. A reduced Agulhas leakage (about 3.1 Sv; 1 Sv = 106 m3 s−1) is found to be associated with a weaker Southern Hemisphere (SH) supergyre and Indonesian throughflow. These changes are due to reduced wind stress curl over the SH supergyre, associated with a weaker Hadley circulation and a weaker SH subtropical jet. The northward cross-equatorial transport of thermocline and intermediate waters is much more strongly reduced than Agulhas leakage in relation with an AMOC collapse. A cross-equatorial gyre develops due to an anomalous wind stress curl over the tropics that results from the anomalous sea surface temperature gradient associated with reduced ocean heat transport. This cross-equatorial gyre completely blocks the transport of thermocline waters from the South to the North Atlantic. The waters originating from Agulhas leakage flow somewhat deeper and most of it recirculates in the South Atlantic subtropical gyre, leading to a gyre intensification. This intensification is consistent with the anomalous surface cooling over the South Atlantic. Most changes in South Atlantic circulation due to global warming, featuring a reduced AMOC, are qualitatively similar to the response to an AMOC collapse, but smaller in amplitude. However, the increased northward cross-equatorial transport of intermediate water relative to thermocline water is a strong fingerprint of an AMOC collapse.

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Acknowledgments

This work was granted by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. The ESSENCE project, lead by Wilco Hazeleger (KNMI) and Henk Dijkstra (UU/IMAU), was carried out with support of DEISA, HLRS, SARA, and NCF (through NCF projects NRG-2006.06, CAVE-60-023 and SG-06-267). We thank the DEISA Consortium (co-funded by the EU, FP6 projects 508830/031513) for support within the DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative (http://www.deisa.org). The authors thank Andreas Sterl and Camiel Severijns (KNMI), and HLRS and SARA staff for technical support. We greatly appreciated the discussions with B. Sloyan and J. Mignot. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Audine Laurian

  2. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, De Bilt, The Netherlands

    Sybren S. Drijfhout

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  1. Audine Laurian
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  2. Sybren S. Drijfhout
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Correspondence to Audine Laurian.

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Laurian, A., Drijfhout, S.S. Response of the South Atlantic circulation to an abrupt collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Clim Dyn 37, 521–530 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0890-3

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