Friday, January 31, 2025 at 10:30am CT
Speaker: Spencer Jones, Assistant Professor, Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University
Host: Patrick Heimbach
Title: Adventures in Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport: AMOC, gyres, and tropical upwelling
Abstract: Heat transport in the Atlantic is everywhere northward, and exhibits strong multidecadal variability at some latitudes. This variability is thought to drive Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, which impacts many climate variables including sea-ice concentration and tropical precipitation patterns. Scientists often try to partition this heat transport into two components: the heat transport by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the heat transport by the gyres. I will discuss some different methods for doing this: none of these methods is perfect, but overall these methods indicate that most heat transport is performed by the AMOC. I will show that none of these methods works well in the tropics, and I will talk about some new work that explores how tropical winds impact ocean heat transport in the Atlantic between 40S and 40N.
