Dorotea Iovino and Simona Masina from ANS Division are the winners of the Best Poster Award of the 2014 CMCC Annual meeting for the poster “Denmark Strait circulation scheme in an eddy-resolving model”.

The poster addresses some issues about modeling the sea ice-ocean system at eddy-resolving resolution especially focusing on Denmark Strait Overflow Water, one of the main components of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic.

Abstract
The Denmark Strait overflow (DSO), the major contributor to the deeper limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a complex mixture of several water masses. The origin of the dense waters feeding the DSO is still debated: its primary source is generally attributed to the East Greenland Current (EGC), but recent observations and numerical studies have showed that the North Icelandic Jet (NIJ), a barotropic current flowing along the continental slope north of Iceland, has a main role in the formation of the dense overflow. Investigating the NIJ within the Nordic Seas system is a significant step to improve our understanding of the dense overflow.
In this study, emphasis is given to the pathways and transports of dense water feeding the DSO. We used an ocean/sea-ice general circulation model in a nested Nordic Seas configuration at eddy-resolving (1/16 degree) resolution, forced by the atmospheric reanalysis ERA-Interim.
The current system across the sill and the characteristics of the overflow water are presented and compared to recent observations. In particular, we analyze the circulation northwest of Iceland to gain better insight into the NIJ sources and to quantify its contribution to the overflowing waters.

Download the poster “Denmark Strait circulation scheme in an eddy-resolving model”.