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ABSTRACT
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We point here a general question that arises in physical oceanography: where does the water come from and where does it go ? As a response, transports (usually expressed in sverdrups: 1 Sv = 106 m3/s) and pathways are often produced by merging distinct sources of data and matching available pieces of knowledge, on a basin (Schmitz and McCartney, 1993) or global scale (Macdonald and Wunsch, 1996; Schmitz, 1996). We show in this study that the output of complex ocean models can be analyzed in a Lagrangian way (Döös, 1995; Blanke and Raynaud, 1997; Blanke et al., 1999, Speich et al., 2001) so that equivalent schemes might be produced, completing our physical understanding of the three-dimensional ocean circulation. Our main results consist in an objective and quantitative estimate of the upper branch of the global thermohaline circulation with its interbasin mass transfers and a picture of the associated mean pathways. |
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