Figure 5: Idealized simulations of the ACC.
From: Closure of the meridional overturning circulation through Southern Ocean upwelling
Results from numerical simulations of an eddying re-entrant channel showing the wind and surface heat fluxes driving the channel flow (overlaid above); an instantaneous three-dimensional snapshot of the model’s temperature field T(here coincident with density 
), with two density surfaces picked out in white, undulating in concert with the mesoscale eddy field; and time-mean overturning cells 
, ψ* and ψres (computed as defined in equation (1)) with time-mean density surfaces plotted in white. Also shown is an instantaneous section of tracer released into the flow. Antarctica is imagined to be on the left. The model is the MITgcm run at a horizontal resolution of 4 km over a 1,000 km by 3,000 km domain. The cooling (blue), warming (red), cooling pattern of air–sea fluxes, on moving out from Antarctica, are arranged to be reminiscent of Fig. 4b, and lead to the particular pattern of upper and lower residual overturning cells seen in ψres. More details can be found from Abernathey and colleagues45.
