Meridional heat flux of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Using self-consistent geostrophic general circulation estimates for the North Atlantic Ocean as determined by an inverse method, I calculate the geostrophic and total meridional heat flux. The result is to a large extent dictated by the assumption of a fixed volume flux through the Florida Straits. There is no fundamental discrepancy between oceanic heat fluxes deduced from atmospheric residuals and those estimated directly in the ocean, including the estimates made here, simply because the error bars on all calculations are very large.
Wunsch
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Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.