Articles | Volume 13, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-13-531-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-13-531-2017
Research article
 | 
06 Jul 2017
Research article |  | 06 Jul 2017

On the meridional ageostrophic transport in the tropical Atlantic

Yao Fu, Johannes Karstensen, and Peter Brandt

Data sets

Physical oceanography and meteorology during METEOR cruises M96, M97 and M98 Y. Fu, J. Karstensen, and P. Brandt https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.870516

NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) 6-hourly Products, January 1979 to December 2010 S. Saha, S. Moorthi, H.-L. Pan, X. Wu, J. Wang, S. Nadiga, P. Tripp, R. Kistler, J. Woollen, D. Behringer, H. Liu, D. Stokes, R. Grumbine, G. Gayno, J. Wang, Yu-Tai Hou, H.-Y. Chuang, H.-M. H. Juang, J. Sela, M. Iredell, R. Treadon, D. Kleist, P. Van Delst, D. Keyser, J. Derber, M. Ek, J. Meng, H. Wei, R. Yang, S. Lord, H. van den Dool, A. Kumar, W. Wang, C. Long, M. Chelliah, Y. Xue, B. Huang, J.-K. Schemm, W. Ebisuzaki, R. Lin, P. Xie, M. Chen, S. Zhou, W. Higgins, C.-Z. Zou, Q. Liu, Y. Chen, Y. Han, L. Cucurull, R. W. Reynolds, G. Rutledge, and M. Goldberg https://doi.org/10.5065/D69K487J

Wind: The L4 near-real-time wind stress data from Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service EU Copernicus https://marine.copernicus.eu

NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Monthly Mean Subsets (from DS090.0), 1948-continuing National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Weather Service/NOAA/U.S. Department of Commerce http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds090.2/

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Short summary
Meridional Ekman transport in the tropical Atlantic was estimated directly by using observed ageostrophic velocity, and indirectly by using wind stress data. The direct and indirect methods agree well with each other. The top of the pycnocline represents the Ekman depth better than the mixed layer depth and a constant depth. The Ekman heat and salt fluxes calculated from sea surface temperature and salinity or from high-resolution temperature and salinity profile data differ only marginally.