Publications by David Marshall

Sensitivity of deep ocean mixing to local internal tide breaking and mixing efficiency

Geophysical Research Letters Wiley (2019)

L Cimoli, CP Caulfield, HL Johnson, DP Marshall, A Mashayek, AC Naveira Garabato, C Vic

A sea change in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic

Science American Association for the Advancement of Science 363 (2019) 516-521

F Li, S Bacon, H Johnson, DP Marshall, E al.

To provide an observational basis for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections of a slowing Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the 21st century, the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) observing system was launched in the summer of 2014. The first 21-month record reveals a highly variable overturning circulation responsible for the majority of the heat and freshwater transport across the OSNAP line. In a departure from the prevailing view that changes in deep water formation in the Labrador Sea dominate MOC variability, these results suggest that the conversion of warm, salty, shallow Atlantic waters into colder, fresher, deep waters that move southward in the Irminger and Iceland basins is largely responsible for overturning and its variability in the subpolar basin.

AMOC sensitivity to surface buoyancy fluxes: the role of air-sea feedback mechanisms

Climate Dynamics Springer (2019)

Y Kostov, H Johnson, D Marshall

Recent contributions of theory to our understanding of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans American Geophysical Union 124 (2019) 5376-5399

H Johnson, P Cessi, DP Marshall, F Schoesser, MA Spall

Revolutionary observational arrays, together with a new generation of ocean and climate models, have provided new and intriguing insights into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) over the last two decades. Theoretical models have also changed our view of the AMOC, providing a dynamical framework for understanding the new observations and the results of complex models. In this paper we review recent advances in conceptual understanding of the processes maintaining the AMOC. We discuss recent theoretical models that address issues such as the interplay between surface buoyancy and wind forcing, the extent to which the AMOC is adiabatic, the importance of mesoscale eddies, the interaction between the middepth North Atlantic Deep Water cell and the abyssal Antarctic Bottom Water cell, the role of basin geometry and bathymetry, and the importance of a three‐dimensional multiple‐basin perspective. We review new paradigms for deep water formation in the high‐latitude North Atlantic and the impact of diapycnal mixing on vertical motion in the ocean interior. And we discuss advances in our understanding of the AMOC's stability and its scaling with large‐scale meridional density gradients. Along with reviewing theories for the mean AMOC, we consider models of AMOC variability and discuss what we have learned from theory about the detection and meridional propagation of AMOC anomalies. Simple theoretical models remain a vital and powerful tool for articulating our understanding of the AMOC and identifying the processes that are most critical to represent accurately in the next generation of numerical ocean and climate models.

A geometric interpretation of Southern Ocean eddy form stress

Journal of Physical Oceanography American Meteorological Society 49 (2019) 2553-2570

M Poulsen, M Jochum, J Maddison, D Marshall, R Nuterman

An interpretation of eddy form stress via the geometry described by the Eliassen-Palm flux tensor is explored. Complimentary to previous works on eddy Reynolds stress geometry, this study shows that eddy form stress is fully described by a vertical ellipse, whose size, shape and orientation with respect to the mean-flow shear determine the strength and direction of vertical momentum transfers. Following a recent proposal, this geometric framework is here used to form a Gent-McWilliams eddy transfer coefficient which depends on eddy energy and a non-dimensional geometric parameter α, bounded in magnitude by unity. α expresses the efficiency by which eddies exchange energy with baroclinic mean-flow via along-gradient eddy buoyancy flux - a flux equivalent to eddy form stress along mean buoyancy contours. An eddy-resolving ocean general circulation model is used to estimate the spatial structure of α in the Southern Ocean and assess its potential to form a basis for parameterization. α averages to a low but positive value of 0.043 within the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, consistent with an inefficient eddy field extracting energy from the mean-flow. It is found that the low eddy efficiency is mainly the result of that eddy buoyancy fluxes are weakly anisotropic on average. α is subject to pronounced vertical structure and is maximum at ∼ 3 km depth where eddy buoyancy fluxes tend to be directed most downgradient. Since α partly sets the eddy form stress in the Southern Ocean, a parameterization for α must reproduce its vertical structure to provide a faithful representation of vertical stress divergence and eddy forcing.

Eddy-mixing entropy and its maximization in forced-dissipative geostrophic turbulence

Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment IOP Publishing 2018 (2018) 073206

T David, L Zanna, D Marshall

An equilibrium, or maximum entropy, statistical mechanics theory can be derived for ideal, unforced and inviscid, geophysical flows. However, for all geophysical flows which occur in nature,forcing and dissipation play a major role. Here, a study of eddy-mixing entropy in a forced dissipative barotropic ocean model is presented. We heuristically investigate the temporal evolution of eddy-mixing entropy, as defined for the equilibrium theory, in a strongly forced and dissipative system. It is shown that the eddy-mixing entropy provides a descriptive tool for understanding three stages of the turbulence life cycle: growth of instability; formation of large scale structures; and steady state fluctuations. The fact that the eddy-mixing entropy behaves in a dynamically balanced way is not a priori clear and provides a novel means of quantifying turbulent disorder in geophysical flows. Further, by determining the relationship between the time evolution of entropy and the maximum entropy principle, evidence is found for the action of this principle in a forced dissipative flow. The maximum entropy potential vorticity statistics are calculated for the flow and are compared with numerical simulations. Deficiencies of the maximum entropy statistics are discussed in the context of the mean-field approximation for energy. This study highlights the importance of entropy and statistical mechanics in the study of geostrophic turbulence.

Implementation of a geometrically informed and energetically constrained mesoscale eddy parameterization in an ocean circulation model

Journal of Physical Oceanography American Meteorological Society 48 (2018) 2363–2382-

J Mak, J Maddison, D Marshall, D Munday

The global stratification and circulation, and their sensitivities to changes in forcing, depend crucially on the representation of the mesoscale eddy field in a numerical ocean circulation model. Here, a geometrically informed and energetically constrained parameterization framework for mesoscale eddies — termed GEOMETRIC — is proposed and implemented in three-dimensional channel and sector models. The GEOMETRIC framework closes eddy buoyancy fluxes according to the standard Gent–McWilliams scheme, but with the eddy transfer coefficient constrained by the depth-integrated eddy energy field, provided through a prognostic eddy energy budget evolving with the mean state. It is found that coarse resolution models employing GEOMETRIC display broad agreement in the sensitivity of the circumpolar transport, meridional overturning circulation and depth-integrated eddy energy pattern to surface wind stress as compared with analogous reference calculations at eddy permitting resolutions. Notably, eddy saturation — the insensitivity of the time-mean circumpolar transport to changes in wind forcing — is found in the coarse resolution sector model. In contrast, differences in the sensitivity of the depth-integrated eddy energy are found in model calculations in the channel experiments that vary the eddy energy dissipation, attributed to the simple prognostic eddy energy equation employed. Further improvements to the GEOMETRIC framework require a shift in focus from how to close for eddy buoyancy fluxes to the representation of eddy energetics.

Impacts of Atmospheric Reanalysis Uncertainty on Atlantic Overturning Estimates at 25°N

Journal of Climate American Meteorological Society 31 (2018) 8719-8744

HR Pillar, HL Johnson, DP Marshall, P Heimbach, S Takao

<jats:p> Atmospheric reanalyses are commonly used to force numerical ocean models, but despite large discrepancies reported between different products, the impact of reanalysis uncertainty on the simulated ocean state is rarely assessed. In this study, the impact of uncertainty in surface fluxes of buoyancy and momentum on the modeled Atlantic meridional overturning at 25°N is quantified for the period January 1994–December 2011. By using an ocean-only climate model and its adjoint, the space and time origins of overturning uncertainty resulting from air–sea flux uncertainty are fully explored. Uncertainty in overturning induced by prior air–sea flux uncertainty can exceed 4 Sv (where 1 Sv ≡ 10<jats:sup>6</jats:sup> m<jats:sup>3</jats:sup> s<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>) within 15 yr, at times exceeding the amplitude of the ensemble-mean overturning anomaly. A key result is that, on average, uncertainty in the overturning at 25°N is dominated by uncertainty in the zonal wind at lags of up to 6.5 yr and by uncertainty in surface heat fluxes thereafter, with winter heat flux uncertainty over the Labrador Sea appearing to play a critically important role. </jats:p>

Atlantic-Pacific asymmetry in deep-water formation

Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences Annual Reviews 46 (2018) 327-352

D Ferreira, HK Coxall, P Cessi, HA Dijkstra, A de Boer, SS Drijfhout, T Eldevik, N Harnik, D Marshall, JF McManus, J Nilsson, F Roquet, T Schneider, RC Wills

While the Atlantic Ocean is ventilated by high-latitude deep water formation and exhibits a pole-to-pole overturning circulation, the Pacific Ocean does not. This asymmetric global overturning pattern has persisted for the past 2–3 million years, with evidence for different ventilation modes in the deeper past. In the current climate, the Atlantic-Pacific asymmetry occurs because the Atlantic is more saline, enabling deep convection. To what extent the salinity contrast between the two basins is dominated by atmospheric processes (larger net evaporation over the Atlantic) or oceanic processes (salinity transport into the Atlantic) remains an outstanding question. Numerical simulations have provided support for both mechanisms; observations of the present climate support a strong role for atmospheric processes as well as some modulation by oceanic processes. A major avenue for future work is the quantification of the various processes at play to identify which mechanisms are primary in different climate states.

Implications of eddy cancellation on nutrient distribution within subtropical gyres

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 123 (2018) 6720-6735

E Doddridge, D Marshall

The role of mesoscale eddies within the nutrient budget of subtropical gyres remains poorly understood and poorly constrained. We explore a new mechanism by which mesoscale eddies may contribute to these nutrient budgets, namely eddy cancellation. Eddy cancellation describes the rectified effect of mesoscale eddies acting to oppose the Eulerian‐mean Ekman pumping. We present an idealized axisymmetric two‐layer model of a nutrient in a wind‐driven gyre and explore the sensitivity of this model to variations in its parameter values. We find that the residual Ekman pumping velocity has a substantial impact on nutrient concentration, as does mode water thickness. These results suggest the response to both residual Ekman pumping and mode water thickness is non‐monotonic: for small values of these parameters the nutrient concentration decreases as the parameter increases. However, beyond a critical value, further increases in Ekman pumping or mode water thickness increase nutrient concentration throughout our highly idealized model. A thin mode water layer promotes vertical diffusion of nutrients from the abyss, while a thicker mode water layer increases productivity by reducing the parametrized particulate flux through the thermocline. The impact of mode water thickness is modulated by the residual Ekman pumping velocity: strong Ekman pumping suppresses the influence of mode water thickness on nutrient concentrations. We use satellite and in‐situ measurements to assess the influence of mode water thickness on primary productivity, and find a statistically significant relationship; thicker mode water correlates with higher productivity. This result is consistent with a small residual Ekman pumping velocity.

Relative strength of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography Taylor and Francis 69 (2017) 1338884-1338884

D Marshall, H Johnson

<p>A simple relationship, based on thermal wind balance, is derived that relates the relative strength of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to the ratios of three depth scales: the e-folding depth of the global stratification, the depth of maximum overturning streamfunction and the maximum depth of the ACC. For realistic values of these depth scales, the relationship predicts a factor 8 &amp;pm; 4 difference in the volume transports of the ACC and AMOC, consistent with the observation-based ratio of 8 &amp;pm; 2.</p>

Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program: a new international ocean observing system

Bulletin of the the American Meteorological Society American Meteorological Society 98 (2016) 737–752-

MS Lozier, S Bacon, AS Bower, HL Johnson, DP Marshall

A new ocean observing system has been launched in the North Atlantic in order to understand the linkage between the meridional overturning circulation and deep water formation. <br/><br/> For decades oceanographers have understood the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to be primarily driven by changes in the production of deep water formation in the subpolar and subarctic North Atlantic. Indeed, current IPCC projections of an AMOC slowdown in the 21st century based on climate models are attributed to the inhibition of deep convection in the North Atlantic. However, observational evidence for this linkage has been elusive: there has been no clear demonstration of AMOC variability in response to changes in deep water formation. The motivation for understanding this linkage is compelling since the overturning circulation has been shown to sequester heat and anthropogenic carbon in the deep ocean. Furthermore, AMOC variability is expected to impact this sequestration as well as have consequences for regional and global climates through its effect on the poleward transport of warm water. Motivated by the need for a mechanistic understanding of the AMOC, an international community has assembled an observing system, Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic (OSNAP), to provide a continuous record of the trans-basin fluxes of heat, mass and freshwater and to link that record to convective activity and water mass transformation at high latitudes. OSNAP, in conjunction with the RAPID/MOCHA array at 26°N and other observational elements, will provide a comprehensive measure of the three-dimensional AMOC and an understanding of what drives its variability. The OSNAP observing system was fully deployed in the summer of 2014 and the first OSNAP data products are expected in the fall of 2017.

Eddy saturation and frictional control of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current

Geophysical Research Letters American Geophysical Union 44 (2017) 286-292

D Marshall, MHP Ambaum, JR Maddison, DR Munday, L Novak

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the strongest current in the ocean and has a pivotal impact on ocean stratification, heat content, and carbon content. The circumpolar volume transport is relatively insensitive to surface wind forcing in models that resolve turbulent ocean eddies, a process termed “eddy saturation.” Here a simple model is presented that explains the physics of eddy saturation with three ingredients: a momentum budget, a relation between the eddy form stress and eddy energy, and an eddy energy budget. The model explains both the insensitivity of circumpolar volume transport to surface wind stress and the increase of eddy energy with wind stress. The model further predicts that circumpolar transport increases with increased bottom friction, a counterintuitive result that is confirmed in eddy-permitting calculations. These results suggest an unexpected and important impact of eddy energy dissipation, through bottom drag or lee wave generation, on ocean stratification, ocean heat content, and potentially atmospheric CO2.

Emergent eddy saturation from an energy constrained eddy parameterisation

Ocean Modelling Elsevier 112 (2017) 125-138

J Mak, D Marshall, SD Bachman, JR Maddison

The large-scale features of the global ocean circulation and the sensitivity of these features with respect to forcing changes are critically dependent upon the influence of the mesoscale eddy field. One such feature, observed in numerical simulations whereby the mesoscale eddy field is at least partially resolved, is the phenomenon of eddy saturation, where the time-mean circumpolar transport of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current displays relative insensitivity to wind forcing changes. Coarse-resolution models employing the Gent–McWilliams parameterisation with a constant Gent–McWilliams eddy transfer coefficient seem unable to reproduce this phenomenon. In this article, an idealised model for a wind-forced, zonally symmetric flow in a channel is used to investigate the sensitivity of the circumpolar transport to changes in wind forcing under different eddy closures. It is shown that, when coupled to a simple parameterised eddy energy budget, the Gent–McWilliams eddy transfer coefficient of the form described in Marshall et al. (2012) [ A framework for parameterizing eddy potential vorticity fluxes , J. Phys. Oceanogr., vol. 42, 539–557], which includes a linear eddy energy dependence, produces eddy saturation as an emergent property.

The statistical nature of turbulent barotropic ocean jets

Ocean Modelling Elsevier 113 (2017) 34-49

L Zanna, TW David, D Marshall

Jets are an important element of the global ocean circulation. Since these jets are turbulent, it is important that they are characterized using a statistical framework. A high resolution barotropic channel ocean model is used to study jet statistics over a wide range of forcing and dissipation parameters. The first four moments of the potential vorticity distribution on contours of time-averaged streamfunction are considered: mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis. A self-similar response to forcing is found in the mean and standard deviation for eastward barotropic jets which exhibit strong mixing barriers; this self-similarity is related to the global potential enstrophy of the flow. The skewness and kurtosis give a behaviour which is characteristic of mixing barriers, revealing a bi/trimodal statistical distribution of potential vorticity with homogenized potential vorticity on each side of the barrier. The mixing barrier can be described by a simple statistical model. This behaviour is shown to be lost in westward jets due to an asymmetry in the formation of zonal mixing barriers. Moreover, when the statistical analysis is performed on eastward jets in a streamfunction following frame of reference, the distribution becomes monomodal. In this way we can distinguish between the statistics due to wave-like meandering of the jet and the statistics due to the more diffusive eddies. The statistical signature of mixing barriers can be seen in more realistic representations of the Southern Ocean and is shown to be an useful diagnostic tool for identifying strong jets on isopycnal surfaces. The statistical consequences of the presence, and absence, of mixing barriers are likely to be valuable for the development of stochastic representations of eddies and their dynamics in ocean models.

Evaluation of a scalar eddy transport coefficient based on geometric constraints

Ocean Modelling Elsevier 109 (2016) 44–54-

SD Bachman, DP Marshall, JR Maddison, J Mak

A suite of idealized models is used to evaluate and compare several previously proposed scalings for the eddy transport coefficient in downgradient mesoscale eddy closures. Of special interest in this comparison is a scaling introduced as part of the eddy parameterization framework of Marshall et al. (2012), which is derived using the inherent geometry of the Eliassen–Palm eddy flux tensor. The primary advantage of using this coefficient in a downgradient closure is that all dimensional terms are explicitly specified and the only uncertainty is a nondimensional parameter, α, which is bounded by one in magnitude. In each model a set of passive tracers is initialized, whose flux statistics are used to invert for the eddy- induced tracer transport. Unlike previous work, where this technique has been employed to diagnose the tensor coefficient of a linear flux-gradient relationship, the idealization of these models allows the lateral eddy transport to be described by a scalar coefficient. The skill of the extant scalings is then measured by comparing their predicted values against the coefficients diagnosed using this method. The Marshall et al. (2012) scaling is shown to scale most closely with the diagnosed coefficients across all simulations. It is shown that the skill of this scaling is due to its functional dependence on the total eddy energy, and that this scaling provides an excellent match to the diagnosed fluxes even in the limit of constant α. Possible extensions to this work, including how to incorporate the resultant transport coefficient into the Gent and McWilliams parameterization, are discussed.

Characterising the chaotic nature of ocean ventilation

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans American Geophysical Union 122 (2017) 7577–7594-

GA MacGilchrist, DP Marshall, H Johnson, C Lique, M Thomas

Ventilation of the upper ocean plays an important role in climate variability on interannual to decadal timescales by influencing the exchange of heat and carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and ocean. The turbulent nature of ocean circulation, manifest in a vigorous mesoscale eddy field, means that pathways of ventilation, once thought to be quasi-laminar, are in fact highly chaotic. We characterise the chaotic nature of ventilation pathways according to a nondimensional ‘filamentation number', which estimates the reduction in filament width of a ventilated fluid parcel due to mesoscale strain. In the subtropical North Atlantic of an eddy-permitting ocean model, the filamentation number is large everywhere across three upper ocean density surfaces — implying highly chaotic ventilation pathways — and increases with depth. By mapping surface ocean properties onto these density surfaces, we directly resolve the highly filamented structure and confirm that the filamentation number captures its spatial variability. These results have implications for the spreading of atmospherically-derived tracers into the ocean interior.

Submesoscale Instabilities in Mesoscale Eddies


L Brannigan, DP Marshall, ACN Garabato, AJG Nurser, J Kaiser

A Model of the Ocean Overturning Circulation with Two Closed Basins and a Reentrant Channel


R Ferrari, L-P Nadeau, DP Marshall, LC Allison, HL Johnson

A geometric interpretation of eddy Reynolds stresses in barotropic ocean jets

Journal of Physical Oceanography American Meteorological Society 46 (2016) 2285–2307-

T Tamarin, JR Maddison, DP Marshall, E Heifetz

Barotropic eddy fluxes are analyzed through a geometric decomposition of the eddy stress tensor. Specifically, the geometry of the eddy variance ellipse, a two-dimensional visualization of the stress tensor describing the mean eddy shape and tilt, is used to elucidate eddy propagation and eddy feedback on the mean flow. Linear shear and jet profiles are analyzed and theoretical results are compared against fully nonlinear simulations. For flows with zero planetary vorticity gradient, analytic solutions for theeddy ellipse tilt and anisotropy are obtained that provide a direct relationship between the eddy tilt and the phasedifference of a normal-mode solution. This allows a straightforward interpretation of the eddy–mean flow interaction in terms of classical stability theory: the initially unstable jet gives rise to eddies that are tilted ‘‘against the shear’’ and extract energy from the mean flow; once the jet stabilizes, eddies become tilted ‘‘with the shear’’ and return their energy to the mean flow. For a nonzero planetary vorticity gradient, ray-tracing theory is used to predict ellipse geometry and its impact on eddy propagation within a jet. An analytic solution for the eddy tilt is found for a Rossby wave on a constant background shear. The ray-tracing results broadly agree with the eddy tilt diagnosed from a fully nonlinear simulation.