| The goal of this thesis is to combine tracer observations with simple models to make quantitative estimates of various oceanographic processes. After a brief introduction and background to the work in this dissertation (Chapter 1), the use of global tracer observations in the study of long-term average rates of deep-water formation in the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean is discussed within an inverse-modeling framework (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, the combined use of geostrophy and tracer conservation statements in constraining time-averaged fluxes in the ocean in a box-model framework is critically examined. Bomb-derived tracers are used to verify independently-obtained rates of mixing between northern and southern subtropical waters in the equatorial Pacific in Chapter 4.; Appendix A consists of published paper entitled “Deep Water Formation Rates Inferred from Global Tracer Distributions: An Inverse Approach”. This paper covers much of the background work relevant to Chapter 2. Appendix B, “An elementary guide to abyssal radiocarbon budgets”, provides an account of the assumptions inherent in the budgets discussed and conclusions drawn in Chapter 2. In appendix C, a series of plots of the global distribution of the tracer ‘phosphate star’ are presented (based on the newly available WOCE dataset). |
