Lagrangian Decomposition of Meridional Heat Transport at 26.5N, 2004-2015

Lagrangian trajectories of numerical water parcels initialized monthly from 2004 to 2015 track the southward transport across the RAPID 26.5N array in the North Atlantic. Each water parcel represents an average volume transport of 3.3 mSv and is advected backwards-in-time for up to 25 years using the TRACMASS v7.1 tool on the ORCA0083-N06 ocean model hindcast. The dataset, created by Oliver John Tooth at the University of Oxford, provides initial and final positions and properties like temperature and salinity for these parcels.

Use Cases

• Analyzing pathways and timescales of water mass transport from the subpolar North Atlantic to the subtropics based on the Lagrangian particle tracking.
• Studying the properties of North Atlantic Deep Water as it moves southward based on the recorded conservative temperature and absolute salinity.
• Validating ocean model simulations of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation based on the comparison of simulated Lagrangian trajectories with observational arrays.
• Investigating the connectivity between major ocean observation arrays (RAPID, OSNAP) based on the particle termination conditions.
• Quantifying the volume transport contributions of different pathways in the subtropical gyre based on the particle-initialized transport scaling.

Strengths

• Trajectories cover a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015, initialized monthly.
• Each water parcel's associated volume transport of 3.3 mSv is conserved, enabling robust Lagrangian statistics.
• Particle tracking uses a high-resolution ORCA0083-N06 ocean model hindcast spanning 1958-2015.

Limitations

• Pathways transporting dense North Atlantic Deep Water on multi-decadal timescales are not fully resolved.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

ORCA0083-N06 ocean sea-ice model hindcast and TRACMASS v7.1 Lagrangian particle tracking tool.

Collection Method

Numerical water parcels were initialized to sample transport across the RAPID array and advected backwards-in-time using a custom TRACMASS version.

Time Range

2004-2015 for particle initialization, with model hindcast data from 1958-2015.

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean, focused on the RAPID 26.5N array and connecting to OSNAP arrays, the English Channel, and Gibraltar Strait.