Freshwater transport in the East Greenland Current in a realistic, high-resolution Model
MASTER’S THESIS IN PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY
Eirik Kvamme
Iceland Greenland Seas Project model run
Simulates one year (2017-09-01 to 2018-08-31)
Coupled ocean-ice model
6hourly time resolution saved
Up to 216 vertical layers
34 psu
Mean horizontal Velocity at Z=50 m
Z= 11.5 m
NJMR = Northern Jan Mayen Ridge
Feb
Aug
Motivation
Hypotheses
Zonal FWT is dominated by eddy transport
JMC is purely eddy driven or IGP model run does not resolve JMC
Signs of Eddies being important in liquid FWT (Spall et al. 2023)
Research question
DOES EDDIES TRANSPORT A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF FW FROM THE GREENLAND SHELF INTO THE GREENLAND SEA?
IS JMC PURELY EDDY DRIVEN OR DOES THE MODEL FAIL TO RESOLVE JMC?
WHY DOES LARGE EDDY STRUCTURES FORM AT THE NJMR?
Where is freshwater transported through the EGC?
JMC
EGCC/EGC
NIIC
EIC
EGSB = East Greenland Shelf Break
EIC
NIIC/(EIC?)
JMC
?
?
Signs of eddy structures
?
Eddy detection and tracking (WIP)
Eddy detection
WIP
Local max/min SSH in 9x9 star search pattern
Area of outermost closed SSH contour
Method based on Yi et al. 2014; Matsuoka et al. 2016
Overlapping in time
Anti-cyclonic
Cyclonic
Outer region
Conclusions
Questions/feedback?
Defining reference salinity
Method of Aagaard and Carmack 1989
Computed from weighted grid size
Reference salinity from weighted monthly mean values
How does the model results differ from observations?
Model - observed
Volume transport at boundaries
Mean volume transport
Cumulated mean volume transport
Mean volume transport
Cumulated mean volume transport
Advective
Surface forcings
Eddy method
Ongoing
Eddy duration
Unique ID’s: 7 494
Total eddies: 25 377
Anti-cyclonic
Cyclonic
Total
All eddies