The Ocean and the Climate System - Ocean in the Earth System - page 102

around the Antarctic. This increase in wind leads to an increase in
northward Ekman transport, which could contribute to accelerating the
rise of deep waters rich in carbon, and therefore to the saturation of
the absorption capacity of anthropic carbon into the cold surface
waters of the Austral Ocean, which would be positive feedback of the
climate system, accelerating the warming. Indeed, recent studies show
that the dynamics of this region are not that simple. The intensification
of the average circulation is in fact compensated by the circulation of
eddies, which are very active in the Antarctic circumpolar current.
This leads to modifications in regions of absorption but also to
convection and ventilation, with, moreover an important meridional
variability.
The debate on the evolution of the absorption capacity of the ocean
is still largely open and it highlights the importance of the interactions
that are manifested as much among the physical and biochemical
phenomena as among the processes at different scales. Our knowledge
of the ocean is recent: the last few years have brought about as many
new observations through the ARGO floats and through satellites as
the entire 20th Century. This difficulty of reconstructing a long-term
history of the ocean is a major obstacle to our understanding of its
equilibrium on a large scale in an Earth system whose trajectory is not
in equilibrium today.
2.6. Bibliography
[BRO 79] B ROECKER W.S., “The great ocean conveyor”, Oceanography ,
vol. 4, pp. 79-89, 1979.
[CAR 85] C ARISSIMO B.C., O ORT A.H., V ONDER H AAR T.H., “Estimating
the meridional energy transports in the atmosphere and the ocean”,
Journal of Physical Oceanography , vol. 15, pp. 82-91, 1985.
[FIE 10] F IEUX M., L'océan planétaire , illustrations by A NDRIE C., Presses
de l'ENSTA, Paris, 2010.
[GIL 82] G ILL A.E., Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics , Academic Press, London
International Geophysics Series, vol. 30, 1982.