Léon Chafik

Léon Chafik
Stockholm University | SU · Department of Meteorology (MISU)

PhD

About

65
Publications
15,050
Reads
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1,908
Citations
Introduction
I am interested in ocean circulation, climate variability and change in the Subpolar North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas.
Additional affiliations
September 2018 - present
Stockholm University
Position
  • Researcher
September 2016 - August 2018
University of Bergen
Position
  • Researcher
November 2014 - present
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Position
  • Research Associate
Education
September 2005 - June 2009
Stockholm University
Field of study
  • Meteorology and Oceanography

Publications

Publications (65)
Article
Full-text available
The AMOC FINGERPRINT and GYRE INDEX are two widely used metrics by the oceanographic community to assess whether northward ocean heat transport, and consequently temperature variability in the subpolar North Atlantic, is primarily governed by the Atlantic overturning circulation or the horizontal gyre circulation. Although these metrics are present...
Article
Full-text available
Plain Language Summary In the subpolar North Atlantic, warm salty waters get transported northwards by the upper branch of the meridional overturning circulation. As they travel northwards, they transform: cooling, densifying, and sinking. The cooler deeper waters then get transported back southwards toward the equator in the lower branch of the ov...
Article
Full-text available
Quantifying the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) involves separating the northward and southward limbs and calculating their volume transports. The limbs can be distinguished either by depth level or by density class, but recent results have indicated that this choice of coordinate system leads to divergent results...
Article
Full-text available
Reliable sea-level observations in coastal regions are needed to assess the impact of sea level on coastal communities and ecosystems. This paper evaluates the ability of in-situ and remote sensing instruments to monitor and help explain the mass component of sea level along the coast of Norway. The general agreement between three different GRACE/G...
Preprint
The lower limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the equatorward flow of dense waters that have been transformed due to the cooling and freshening of the poleward-flowing upper limb. In the subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA), upper limb variability is primarily set by the North Atlantic Current, whereas lower limb variability...
Article
Full-text available
The overturning circulation in the Nordic Seas involves the transformation of warm Atlantic waters into cold, dense overflows. These overflow waters return to the North Atlantic and form the headwaters to the deep limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The Nordic Seas are thus a key component of the AMOC. However, little is...
Article
Full-text available
The Faroe‐Bank Channel (FBC) is a key gateway through which dense overflow water of the Nordic Seas supplies the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Most recently, it was discovered that a deep jet through the Faroe‐Shetland Channel carries the bulk of this overflow water, but numerous questions regarding its structure, s...
Book
Full-text available
The ICES Report on Ocean Climate (IROC) combines decades of ocean observations across the North Atlantic ICES regions to describe the current status of sea temperature, salinity, and atmospheric conditions, as well as observed trends and recent variability. The IROC production focuses the main efforts from ICES Working Group on Oceanic Hydrograph
Article
Full-text available
Significant societally important climate impacts can be caused by changes in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) at higher latitudes. Focusing on variability and long‐term change of the subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA)—a key AMOC action center—and using eastern OSNAP array observations, we identify a distinct densit...
Article
Full-text available
The Iceland Basin in the eastern Subpolar North Atlantic is an eddy‐rich region characterized by intense anticyclonic eddy activity. Our study present the variability of coherent Anticyclonic Eddies (AEs) generated in this region, using satellite altimetry and two ocean eddy tracking algorithms. The yearly count of AEs in the Iceland Basin reveals...
Article
Full-text available
Sea-level variations in coastal areas can differ significantly from those in the nearby open ocean. Monitoring coastal sea-level variations is therefore crucial to understand how climate variability can affect the densely populated coastal regions of the globe. In this paper, we study the sea-level variability along the coast of Norway by means of...
Article
Full-text available
The mooring observations of the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program reveal a significant freshening of the Iceland Scotland overflow waters that did not involve the Nordic Seas, the source of the dense Deep North Atlantic Water (Devana et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094396). Their study suggests that this freshening at d...
Article
Full-text available
Warm Atlantic Water reaches the Arctic Ocean via two gateways: the Barents Sea Opening (BSO) and Fram Strait. Here, we study the near‐surface flow of the Atlantic Water in the Nordic Seas and its fractionation between these Arctic gateways, using simulated Lagrangian trajectories based on satellite altimetry for 1994–2018. Lagrangian particles are...
Article
Full-text available
The Norwegian Sea gyre (NSG) is a large body of Arctic intermediate water and deep dense overflow waters, which circulate counterclockwise within the Norwegian Sea. Argo float trajectories presented in this study suggest that the NSG attains its strongest and most focused flow downstream of a confluence of subarctic waters from the Iceland Sea and...
Preprint
Full-text available
Sea-level variations in coastal areas can differ significantly from those in the nearby open ocean. Monitoring coastal sea-level variations is therefore crucial to understand how climate variability can affect the densely populated coastal regions of the globe. In this paper, we study the sea-level variability along the coast of Norway by means of...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding historical and projected coastal sea-level change is limited because the impact of large-scale ocean dynamics is not well constrained. Here, we use a global set of tide-gauge records over nine regions to analyse the relationship between coastal sea-level variability and open-ocean steric height, related to density fluctuations. Intera...
Article
Recent research offers new insights into exchanges of water between the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas, which play critical roles in the climate-regulating Atlantic overturning circulation.
Article
Full-text available
The Subpolar North Atlantic is known for rapid reversals of decadal temperature trends, with ramifications encompassing the large-scale meridional overturning and gyre circulations, Arctic heat and mass balances, or extreme continental weather. Here, we combine datasets derived from sustained ocean observing systems (satellite and in situ), idealiz...
Article
Full-text available
Wintertime sea level variability over the northern European continental shelf is largely wind-driven. Using daily gridded sea level anomaly from altimetry, we examine both the spatial and the temporal relationship between northern European sea level variability and large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns as represented by the jet cluster parad...
Book
Full-text available
ICES Report on Ocean Climate (IROC) provides summary information on climatic conditions in the North Atlantic. The full-text of IROC is available at http://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.7537.
Article
Decadal sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations in the North Atlantic Ocean influence climate over adjacent land areas and are a major source of skill in climate predictions. However, the mechanisms underlying decadal SST variability remain to be fully understood. This study isolates the mechanisms driving North Atlantic SST variability on decad...
Article
As result of ocean warming, marine boreal species have shifted their distribution poleward, with increases in abundance at higher latitudes, and declines in abundance at lower latitudes. A key to predict future changes in fish communities is to understand how fish stocks respond to climate variability. Scattered field observations in the first half...
Article
Full-text available
The dense overflow waters of the Nordic Seas are an integral link and important diagnostic for the stability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The pathways feeding the overflow remain, however, poorly resolved. Here we use multiple observational platforms and an eddy-resolving ocean model to identify an unrecognized deep fl...
Article
Full-text available
Plain Language Summary Society has been much concerned about the possibility of the slow‐down of what is popularly known as the Gulf Stream and its transport of warm water to high latitudes of the North Atlantic. Were this to happen it is generally understood that the climate of central and northern Europe would turn distinctly colder. Direct measu...
Article
Full-text available
The Nordic Seas constitute the main ocean conveyor of heat between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Although the decadal variability in the subpolar North Atlantic has been given significant attention lately, especially regarding the cooling trend since the mid-2000s, less is known about the potential connection downstream in the nort...
Article
While reasonable knowledge of multi-decadal Arctic freshwater storage variability exists, we have little knowledge of Arctic freshwater exports on similar timescales. A hydrographic time series from the Labrador Shelf, spanning seven decades at annual resolution, is here used to quantify Arctic Ocean freshwater export variability west of Greenland....
Article
Full-text available
The Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation is important to the climate system because it carries heat and carbon northward, and from the surface to the deep ocean. The high salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic is a prerequisite for overturning circulation, and strong freshening could herald a slowdown. We show that the eastern subpolar North Atl...
Article
Full-text available
Climate change is not only about changes in means of climatic variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind, but also their extreme values which are of critical importance to human society and ecosystems. To inspire the Swedish climate research community and to promote assessments of international research on past and future changes in extr...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. The Nordic Seas is the main ocean conveyor of heat between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Although the decadal variability of the Subpolar North Atlantic has been given significant attention lately, especially regarding the cooling trend since mid-2000s, less is known about the potential connection downstream in the northe...
Book
Full-text available
ICES Report on Ocean Climate (IROC) provides summary information on climatic conditions in the North Atlantic. The full-text of IROC is available at https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.5461.
Article
Full-text available
Rapid Arctic warming drives profound change in the marine environment that have significant socio-economic impacts within the Arctic and beyond, including climate and weather hazards, food security, transportation, infrastructure planning and resource extraction. These concerns drive efforts to understand and predict Arctic environmental change and...
Article
Full-text available
Plain language summary The meridional overturning circulation is a two‐dimensional view of the flow north of upper‐ocean warm water and its return south as cold deep and intermediate water. But the actual pathways of warm‐to‐cold conversion are several and remarkably diverse: One branch continues into the Nordic Seas where very dense water is produ...
Article
Full-text available
The interaction between the troposphere and the stratosphere has attracted the attention of climate scientists for several decades not least for the benefit it has on understanding dynamical processes and predictability. This interaction has been revived recently in regard to downward disturbance propagation effects on tropospheric circulations. Th...
Article
Full-text available
Plain Language Summary The global oceans take up roughly a quarter of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and industry per year. As the emissions of CO2 increase, the amount of CO2 taken up by the oceans should increase in proportion; however, the ability of the ocean to remove CO2 from the atmosphere varies on interannual to decadal time scales...
Article
Full-text available
Regional sea-level rise is characterized by decadal acceleration and deceleration periods that typically stem from oceanic climate variability. Here, we investigate decadal sea-level trends during the altimetry era and pin down the associated ocean circulation changes. We find that decadal subpolar gyre cooling (warming), strengthening (weakening),...
Article
We present a binned annual product (BINS) of sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), and sea surface density (SSD) observations for 1896–2015 of the subpolar North Atlantic between 40° N and 70° N, mostly excluding the shelf areas. The product of bin averages over spatial scales on the order of 200 to 500 km, reproducing most of...
Article
Arctic heat and freshwater budgets are highly sensitive to volume transports through the Arctic-Subarctic straits. Here we study the interconnectivity of volume transports through Arctic straits in three models; two coupled global climate models, one with a third-degree horizontal ocean resolution (High Resolution Global Environmental Model version...
Book
Full-text available
ICES Report on Ocean Climate (IROC) provides summary information on climatic conditions in the North Atlantic. The full-text of IROC is available at http://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.4625.
Article
The flow of warm salty water toward the Nordic Seas is of fundamental importance to the climate of central and northern Europe. In an effort to gain an improved quantitative assessment of these fluxes a program was started in 2008 to measure upper-ocean currents from the high-seas ferry Norröna, which operates out of the Faroes to Iceland and Denma...
Article
Full-text available
We present a binned product of sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity, and sea surface density data in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre from 1993 to 2017 that resolves seasonal variability along specific ship routes (10.6096/SSS-BIN-NASG). The characteristics of this product are described and validated through comparisons to other monthly pr...
Article
Full-text available
The so-called gyre index appears to be related to core aspects of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre, meridional overturning circulation, hydrographic properties in the Atlantic inflows toward the Arctic, and in marine ecosystems in the northeast Atlantic Ocean. Recent publications, however, present a more linear version of this index with less of th...
Article
Full-text available
Summer rainfall in the Sahel region has exhibited strong multidecadal variability during the 20th century causing dramatic human and socio-economic impacts. Studies have suggested that the variability is linked to the Atlantic multidecadal variability; a spatially persistent pattern of warm/cold sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. In th...
Article
Full-text available
We present a binned product of sea surface temperature, sea surface salinity and sea surface density data in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre for the 1993–2017 that resolves seasonal variability along specific ship routes (doi:10.6096/SSS-BIN-NASG). The characteristics of this product are described and validated through comparisons to other monthly...
Article
Full-text available
Stable Water Isotopologues (SWIs) are important diagnostic tracers for understanding processes in the atmosphere and the global hydrological cycle. Using eight years (2002–2009) of retrievals from Odin/SMR (Sub-Millimetre Radiometer), the global climatological features of three SWIs, H216O, HDO and H218O, the isotopic composition δD and δ18O in the...
Article
Decadal pulses within the lower-frequency Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) are a prominent but underappreciated AMO feature, representing decadal variability of the subpolar gyre (e.g., the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1970s) and wielding notable influence on the hydroclimate of the African and American continents. Here clues are sought int...
Article
Full-text available
The spatiotemporal structure of the recent decadal subsurface cooling trend in the North Atlantic Ocean is analyzed in the context of the phase reversal of Atlantic multidecadal variability. A vertically integrated ocean heat content (HC) Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index (AMO-HC) definition is proposed in order to capture the thermal state o...
Article
Full-text available
Northern European sea levels show a non-stationary link to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The location of the centers of the NAO dipole, however, can be affected through the interplay with the East Atlantic (EAP) and the Scandinavian (SCAN) teleconnection patterns. Our results indicate the importance of accounting for the binary combination...
Article
Full-text available
The evolution of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) during the Holocene remains uncertain. In particular, a host of new paleoclimate records suggest that ENSO internal variability or other external forcings may have dwarfed the fairly modest ENSO response to precessional insolation changes simulated in climate models. Here, using fully coupled...
Article
The meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the North Atlantic plays a major role in the transport of heat from low to high latitudes. In this study we combine recent measurements of currents from the surface to >700 m from a shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler with Argo profiles (to 2000 m) to estimate poleward volume, heat and freshwa...
Article
The anomalous decadal warming of the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean (SPNA), and the northward spreading of this warm water has been linked to rapid Arctic sea-ice loss and more frequent cold European winters. Recently, variations in this heat transport have also been reported to co-vary with global warming slowdown/acceleration periods via a Pacific...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, several studies have identified an area of intense anticyclonic activity about 500 km straight west of the Lofoten Islands at 70°N in the northern Norwegian Sea. Now recognized as the coherent Lofoten Basin Eddy (LBE), it is maintained by a supply of anticyclonic eddies that break away from the Norwegian Atlantic Current. Here we s...
Article
The climatic conditions over the Arctic Ocean are strongly influenced by the inflow of warm Atlantic water conveyed by the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current (NwASC). Based on sea surface height (SSH) data from altimetry, we develop a simple dynamical measure of the NwASC transport to diagnose its spatio-temporal variability. This supports a dynamica...
Article
Full-text available
Significance In the model simulations analyzed here, large high-latitude volcanic eruptions have global and long-lasting effects on climate, altering the spatiotemporal characteristic of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on both short (<1 y) and long timescales and affecting the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMO...
Article
The Lofoten Basin is the largest reservoir of ocean heat in the Nordic Seas. A particular feature of the basin is ‘the Lofoten Vortex’, a most anomalous mesoscale structure in the Nordic Seas. The vortex resides in one of the major winter convection sites in the Norwegian Sea, and is likely to influence the dense water formation of the region. Here...
Article
The flow north of warm subtropical water though the northeastern Atlantic is known to have many pathways that vary over time. Here we use a combination of upper ocean current measurements between Greenland and Scotland near 60°N and satellite altimetry to examine the space-time variability of poleward transport. The high-resolution scans of current...
Article
[1] Over the last decade, several hundred seals have been equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth sensors in the Southern Ocean for both biological and physical oceanographic studies. A calibrated collection of seal-derived hydrographic data is now available, consisting of more than 165,000 profiles. The value of these hydrographic data within...
Data
Full-text available
Tropical cyclones (TCs) actively contribute to the dynamics of Earth's coupled climate system. They influence oceanic mixing rates, upper-ocean heat content, and air-sea fluxes, with implications for atmosphere and ocean dynamics on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Using an ocean general circulation model with modified surface wind forcing, we...
Article
the last decade, several hundred seals have been equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth sensors in the Southern Ocean for both biological and physical oceanographic studies. A calibrated collection of seal-derived hydrographic data is now available, consisting of more than 165,000 profiles. The value of these hydrographic data within the exis...
Data
Full-text available
A B S T R A C T This study, based on satellite-derived sea-surface heights and temperatures as well as hydrographic data, attempts to shed some light on the role of the extreme phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) for the local dynamics of the Faroe-Shetland Channel (FSC). During the low-NAO event 2009Á10 the Shetland-slope current showed...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Results are presented from a series of parametric experimental and analytical studies of the behaviour of dense gravity currents along upward-sloping, rotating, vee-shaped channels. High resolution density profile measurements demonstrate that the outflowing bottom gravity currents tend to adjust to quasi-steady, geostrophic conditions along the ch...

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