Abstract

The global interconnected ocean, often referred to as the ‘Conveyer belt’, has strong influence on the oceans stratifications, distribution of water masses, heat transport and cycling and storage of chemical species as for example carbon dioxide. It is a key player in the Earths climate system. Understanding of the underlying physical processes that drive the Conveyer belt and quantifying its different branches is of great importance for Climate Science purposes and is and intensively studies subject.

Different approaches like tracer tracking, inverse methods and overturning stream-functions, have been used to study the Conveyer. It remains difficult to show an interconnected global ocean circulation, there are large debates about the underlying physics that drive the Conveyer and transport rates are often highly uncertain.

During my PhD thesis we aim to combine a new inverse method with a new overturning stream-function. The combination of two methods allows us, not only to give more accurate estimates of transports rates and show that there is an interconnected global ocean circulation, but more importantly it will also find a global vertical and horizontal distribution of the isopycnal and diapycnal mixing. The latter is of great importance to improve climate models and will provide information on the debate of the underlying physics that drive the overturning circulation.