Temperature–salinity distribution in the northeastern Atlantic from ship and Argo vertical casts
The present study defines new interpolation functions for hydrological data. These functions are applied to generate climatological maps of temperature–salinity distribution with a 25 m depth interval and a 30 km space interval (MEDTRANS data set). The data undergo rigorous initial data quality cont...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2015-03-01
|
| Series: | Ocean Science |
| Online Access: | http://www.ocean-sci.net/11/215/2015/os-11-215-2015.pdf |
| Summary: | The present study defines new interpolation functions for hydrological data.
These functions are applied to generate climatological maps of
temperature–salinity distribution with a 25 m depth interval and a 30 km
space interval (MEDTRANS data set). The data undergo rigorous initial
data quality control, having passed several filtering procedures. The
gridding is done on neutral density surfaces, which allows better
representation of thermohaline fronts for the same gridding radius. The
multi-pass Barnes optimum interpolation procedure with spatially variable
size of the gridding window is used. The shape of the window accounts for the
dominant along-isobath direction of water mass transport over steeply sloping
topography. A local ratio of topographic to planetary β-effects is
used to define the shape of the window as a function of the relative
importance of the topographic influence. The <i>N</i>/<i>f</i> ratio is applied to
account for the baroclinic compensation decay of the topographic influence on
water mass transport with the distance from the bottom. The gridded fields
are available at the website of the Centre of Oceanography of the University
of Lisbon (<a href="http://co.fc.ul.pt/en/data"target="_blank">http://co.fc.ul.pt/en/data</a>).
<br><br>
The MEDTRANS climatology gives more details of the distribution of
water characteristics in the subtropical northeastern Atlantic than other
alternative climatologies and is able to reproduce a number of dynamic
features described in the literature: the acceleration in the meanders of the
Azores current; the cyclonic gyre in the Gulf of Cadiz; and the splitting and
separation of the Mediterranean Water (MW) outflow in two veins near the
Gorringe and Galicia banks. Seasonal climatologies, computed for the warm
(May–October) and cold (November–April) seasons, reveal stronger zonal
extension of the upper ocean patterns during the warm season, as compared to
the cold one. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1812-0784 1812-0792 |