Drake Passage is measured and the ACC turns out to be larger
A line of moored current meters and pressure-recording inverted echo sounders occupied Drake Passage continuously from 2007 to 2011. Summing a mean barotropic transport of 45.6 ± 8.9 Sv with a baroclinic transport of 127.7 Sv relative to zero at the seafloor gave a mean of 173.3 Sv — about 30 per cent above the canonical 134 Sv value that had been the benchmark for global circulation and climate models. The difference lies almost entirely in the barotropic component, which earlier estimates based on hydrography could not see.
Observed — measured or witnessed, with the observation cited.
Subjects
- Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) · natural phenomenon · Southern Ocean — circumpolar · not located
- Drake Passage · geographic_feature · Southern Ocean — between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula
- Sverdrup (Sv) · physical quantity · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Mean Antarctic Circumpolar Current transport measured in Drake Passage
Continuous Drake Passage observations from 2007 to 2011 give a mean ACC transport of 173.3 Sv — barotropic 45.6 ± 8.9 Sv plus baroclinic 127.7 Sv relative to zero at the seafloor — about 30 per cent above the canonical benchmark value. Figures taken from search summaries of the abstract; the article is on a blocked publisher domain.
Geophysical Research Letters (American Geophysical Union) · 2016 · Partly verified
Donohue, K. A., Tracey, K. L., Watts, D. R., Chidichimo, M. P. and Chereskin, T. K., Geophys. Res. Lett. 43, 11,760–11,767, doi:10.1002/2016GL070319
Recorded on Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)
- Twenty-two years of continuous AMOC observation
- Drake Passage is measured and the ACC turns out to be larger
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Twenty-two years of continuous AMOC observation · 2004-04 – 2023-01