Inferring North Atlantic Deep Water Transports from Ocean Bottom Pressure at the Western Boundary

Estimating oceanic transports of volume, heat, carbon, and freshwater is fundamental to understanding the ocean’s role in the evolving climate system. Unique in this context is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that comprises a net northward transport of relatively warm water at depths of ≲1 km throughout the Atlantic basin, compensated at ≳1–5 km by a colder net southward return flow.
While in-situ measurements, such as the RAPID array at 26.5°N, are considered the 'gold standard' to monitore changes in the AMOC, measurements at many latitudes and the detection of e.g. basin-wide modes are non feasible.
However, variations in the overturning are to a good degree accompanied by associated changes in oceanic bottom pressure which opens up new avenues of AMOC monitoring through bottom pressure recorders or even through future satellite gravimetry measurements. 

Here, we investigate the connection between changes in the Atlantic overturning and associated variations in bottom pressure along the western continental shelf in a suite of ocean models. This includes high resolution simulations from a CMIP6 FESOM run by AWI, the regional VIKING20X model by GEOMAR. We investigate to what degree the transport variations can be inferred from bottom pressure signatures alone, limitations of the approach and especially how such signatures could be implemented into a future iteration of the ESA ESM. This would allow the inclusion the these transport-related OBP changes in dedicated simulation studies for future satellite gravimetry missions.