Orals

The climate state of the Atlantic Ocean is known to exert a huge control and hence a decisive role on the surface climate over the neighbouring continents as well as that of the Arctic Ocean. Heat in the South Atlantic converges from both the Pacific and Indian Oceans and is carried northward to higher latitudes along the dynamically-rich oceanic current systems to key deep water formation regions where the atmosphere is in direct contact with the deep ocean. Understanding what drives the variability of the Atlantic Ocean on multiple time scales and long-term trends is thus imperative for more confident predictions of the climate in the future decades.

This session will offer the opportunity to focus on the dynamics, variability and trends along the key climatic current systems from the South Atlantic to the North Atlantic and into Arctic Ocean and how they are influenced by local-, large- or global-scale processes or teleconnections. We aim to bring together researchers using observations, ocean models and state-of-the-art climate models.

We welcome presentations addressing:

- Sources, dynamics, pathways and meridional connectivity of heat and freshwater anomalies from lower to higher latitudes
- Impact of large- and global-scale atmospheric modes on Atlantic Ocean circulation
- Variations and long-term trends in Atlantic overturning circulation and relationship to sea-level and sea-ice change

Invited speaker: Penny Holliday, National Oceanography Centre, UK