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Continuous measurements of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and meridional ocean heat transport at 26.5° N began in April 2004 and are currently available through December 2020. Approximately 90% of the total meridional heat transport (MHT) at 26.5° N is carried by the zonally averaged overturning circulation, and an even larger fraction of the heat transport variability (approx. 95%) is explained by the variability of the zonally averaged overturning. A physically based separation of the heat transport into large-scale AMOC, gyre and shallow wind-driven overturning components remains challenging and requires new investigations and approaches. We review the major interannual changes in the AMOC and MHT that have occurred over the nearly two decades of available observations and their documented impacts on North Atlantic heat content. Changes in the flow-weighted temperature of the Florida Current (Gulf Stream) over the past two decades are now taken into account in the estimates of MHT, and have led to an increased heat transport relative to the AMOC strength in recent years. Estimates of the MHT at 26.5° N from coupled models and various surface flux datasets still tend to show low biases relative to the observations, but indirect estimates based on residual methods (top of atmosphere net radiative flux minus atmospheric energy divergence) have shown recent promise in reproducing the heat transport and its interannual variability. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Atlantic overturning: new observations and challenges’.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 48(22), (2021): e2021GL094396, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094396., Newly available mooring observations from the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) show an abrupt decline in Iceland Scotland Overflow (ISOW) salinity from 2017 to 2018 summer. Previous declines in ISOW salinity of similar magnitude have largely been attributed to changes in convectively formed deep waters in the Nordic Seas on decadal time scales. We show that this rapid decline in salinity was driven by entrainment of a major upper ocean salinity anomaly in the Iceland Basin. This is shown by tracking the propagation of the upper ocean anomaly into ISOW using a combination of mooring and Argo observations, surface drifter trajectories, and numerical model results. A 2-year total transit time from the upper ocean into the ISOW layer was found. The results show that entrainment allows for rapid modification of ISOW, and consequently the lower limb of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, on subdecadal timescales., Financial support for this research was provided by the US National Science Foundation under grants OCE-1259398 and OCE-1756231. S. Zou is supported by the US National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1756361., 2022-05-15

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Li, F., Lozier, M. S., Holliday, N. P., Johns, W. E., Le Bras, I. A., Moat, B. I., Cunningham, S. A., & de Jong, M. F. Observation-based estimates of heat and freshwater exchanges from the subtropical North Atlantic to the Arctic. Progress in Oceanography, 197, (2021): 102640, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2021.102640., Continuous measurements from the OSNAP (Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) array yield the first estimates of trans-basin heat and salinity transports in the subpolar latitudes. For the period from August 2014 to May 2018, there is a poleward heat transport of 0.50 ± 0.05 PW and a poleward salinity transport of 12.5 ± 1.0 Sv across the OSNAP section. Based on the mass and salt budget analyses, we estimate that a surface freshwater input of 0.36 ± 0.05 Sv over the broad subpolar-Arctic region is needed to balance the ocean salinity change created by the OSNAP transports. The overturning circulation is largely responsible for setting these heat and salinity transports (and the derived surface freshwater input) derived from the OSNAP array, while the gyre (isopycnal) circulation contributes to a lesser, but still significant, extent. Despite its relatively weak overturning and heat transport, the Labrador Sea is a strong contributor to salinity and freshwater changes in the subpolar region. Combined with trans-basin transport estimates at other locations, we provide new estimates for the time-mean surface heat and freshwater divergences over a wide domain of the Arctic-North Atlantic region to the north and south of the OSNAP line. Furthermore, we estimate the total heat and freshwater exchanges across the surface area of the extratropical North Atlantic between the OSNAP and the RAPID-MOCHA (RAPID Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heat-flux Array) arrays, by combining the cross-sectional transports with vertically-integrated ocean heat and salinity content. Comparisons with the air-sea heat and freshwater fluxes from atmospheric reanalysis products show an overall consistency, yet with notable differences in the magnitudes during the observation time period., F.L. and M.S.L. were supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1948335). W.E.J. was supported by the National Science Foundation grants RAPID (OCE-1332978 and OCE-1926008) and OSNAP (OCE-1756231 and OCE-1948198). I.A.L.B. was supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1756272 and OCE-2038481). B.M. was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council for the RAPID-AMOC program and the ACSIS program (NE/N018044/1). S.A.C. and N.P.H. were supported by UK NERC National Capability programmes the Extended Ellett Line and CLASS (NE/R015953/1), NERC grants UK OSNAP (NE/K010875/1, NE/K010875/2, NE/K010700/1), UK OSNAP Decade (NE/T00858X/1, NE/T008938/1). S.A.C. received additional supports from the Blue-Action project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant 727852) and the iAtlantic project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant 210522255).

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 126(8), (2021): e2021JC017524, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017524., Since 2014, an array of current meters deployed in the Iceland Basin as part of the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program has provided new measurements of the southward flow of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW) along the eastern flank of the Reykjanes Ridge. The location of the array, near 58–59°N, captures the ISOW plume at the farthest downstream location in the Iceland Basin before significant amounts of ISOW can flow into the Irminger Basin through deep fractures in the Reykjanes Ridge. The net transport of the ISOW plume at this location—approximately 5.3 Sv based on the first 4 years of observations—is significantly larger than previous values obtained farther north in the Iceland Basin, suggesting that either previous measurements did not fully capture the plume transport or that additional entrainment into the ISOW plume occurs as it approaches the southern tip of the Reykjanes Ridge. A detailed water mass analysis of the plume from continuous temperature/salinity observations shows that about 50% of the plume transport (2.6 Sv) is derived from dense waters flowing over the Nordic Sea sills into the Iceland Basin, while the remainder is made up of nearly equal parts of entrained Atlantic thermocline water and modified Labrador Sea Water. The overall results from this study suggest that the ISOW plume approximately doubles its transport through entrainment, similar to that of the Denmark Strait overflow plume in the Irminger Sea that forms the other major overflow source of North Atlantic Deep Water., Financial support for this research was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grants OCE-1259398 and OCE-1756231. S. Zou acknowledges support by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant OCE-1756361., 2022-02-13

The Antilles Current is a narrow, northward flowing boundary current in the western Atlantic just east of the Bahamas. Its role in the larger scale circulation has been debated: alternately thought to be part of the western boundary closure of the gyre circulation or the northward flowing limb of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). From 19 years of moored current meter observations (1987--1991, 2004--2018), we define the strength of the Antilles Current by the net transport between the Bahamas and 76.5°W (spanning about 45 km zonally) and in the thermocline (0–1000 m). We find a mean northward transport of 3.5 Sv, substantial interannual variability, and no discernable trend since 1987. The interannual variability of the AC transport is independent of the variability of the Florida Current (the Gulf Stream through the Florida Straits). Instead, the Antilles Current contributes to the interannual variability of the MOC at 26°N, while the trend in the strength of the gyre circulation (defined as the transbasin thermocline transport minus the AC) is responsible for the trend in the MOC. In particular, the 2009/10 slowdown of the MOC resulted from a weaker northward AC transport, rather than an intensified gyre transport. Using the recent 14 years of in situ transport records, we compare the interannual variability of the gyre circulation to that of wind stress curl forcing via a Sverdrup transport calculation, identifying a potential role for wind stress curl (WSC) forcing at 26°N with a ~2 year lag until 2016. From 2016, the predicted gyre circulation using WSC diverges from the measured gyre strength.

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Li, F., Lozier, M. S., Bacon, S., Bower, A. S., Cunningham, S. A., de Jong, M. F., DeYoung, B., Fraser, N., Fried, N., Han, G., Holliday, N. P., Holte, J., Houpert, L., Inall, M. E., Johns, W. E., Jones, S., Johnson, C., Karstensen, J., Le Bras, I. A., P. Lherminier, X. Lin, H. Mercier, M. Oltmanns, A. Pacini, T. Petit, R. S. Pickart, D. Rayner, F. Straneo, V. Thierry, M. Visbeck, I. Yashayaev & Zhou, C. Subpolar North Atlantic western boundary density anomalies and the Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 3002, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23350-2., Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which have the potential to drive societally-important climate impacts, have traditionally been linked to the strength of deep water formation in the subpolar North Atlantic. Yet there is neither clear observational evidence nor agreement among models about how changes in deep water formation influence overturning. Here, we use data from a trans-basin mooring array (OSNAP—Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) to show that winter convection during 2014–2018 in the interior basin had minimal impact on density changes in the deep western boundary currents in the subpolar basins. Contrary to previous modeling studies, we find no discernable relationship between western boundary changes and subpolar overturning variability over the observational time scales. Our results require a reconsideration of the notion of deep western boundary changes representing overturning characteristics, with implications for constraining the source of overturning variability within and downstream of the subpolar region., We acknowledge funding from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (OCE-1259398, OCE-1756231, OCE-1948335); the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Capability programs the Extended Ellett Line and CLASS (NE/R015953/1), and NERC grants UK-OSNAP (NE/K010875/1, NE/K010875/2, NE/K010700/1) and U.K. OSNAP Decade (NE/T00858X/1, NE/T008938/1). Additional support was received from the European Union 7th Framework Program (FP7 2007-2013) under grant 308299 (NACLIM), the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grants 727852 (Blue-Action), 862626 (EuroSea). We also acknowledge support from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography-Canada (SWOT-C), Canadian Space Agency, the Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation Services Program (ACCASP), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, an Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, and from the China’s national key research and development projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41925025) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201424001). Support for the 53°N array by the RACE program of the German Ministry BMBF is acknowledged, as is the contribution from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program.

The strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) at 26∘ N has now been continuously measured by the RAPID array over the period April 2004–September 2018. This record provides unique insight into the variability of the large-scale ocean circulation, previously only measured by sporadic snapshots of basin-wide transport from hydrographic sections. The continuous measurements have unveiled striking variability on timescales of days to a decade, driven largely by wind forcing, contrasting with previous expectations about a slowly varying buoyancy-forced large-scale ocean circulation. However, these measurements were primarily observed during a warm state of the Atlantic multidecadal variability (AMV) which has been steadily declining since a peak in 2008–2010. In 2013–2015, a period of strong buoyancy forcing by the atmosphere drove intense water-mass transformation in the subpolar North Atlantic and provides a unique opportunity to investigate the response of the large-scale ocean circulation to buoyancy forcing. Modelling studies suggest that the AMOC in the subtropics responds to such events with an increase in overturning transport, after a lag of 3–9 years. At 45∘ N, observations suggest that the AMOC may already be increasing. Examining 26∘ N, we find that the AMOC is no longer weakening, though the recent transport is not above the long-term mean. Extending the record backwards in time at 26∘ N with ocean reanalysis from GloSea5, the transport fluctuations at 26∘ N are consistent with a 0- to 2-year lag from those at 45∘ N, albeit with lower magnitude. Given the short span of time and anticipated delays in the signal from the subpolar to subtropical gyres, it is not yet possible to determine whether the subtropical AMOC strength is recovering nor how the AMOC at 26∘ N responds to intense buoyancy forcing.

Global Oceans is one chapter from the State of the Climate in 2019 annual report and is avail-able from https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0105.1. Compiled by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate in 2019 is based on contr1ibutions from scien-tists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instru-ments located on land, water, ice, and in space. The full report is available from https://doi.org /10.1175/2020BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.