Laboratory Experiments of Freshwater Discharge into the Ocean A
popular hypothesis in paleoclimatology posits that episodic
discharges of melt water from northern hemisphere ice sheets
caused abrupt changes in large-scale ocean circulation and
climate during the last glacial and deglacial periods. In this
context, modern observations such as the accelerated melting of
the Greenland Ice Sheet and the freshening of subpolar waters in
the North Atlantic Ocean appear as causes of concern. However,
the mechanisms responsible for the offshore transport of
freshwater discharged from the continents are poorly understood,
implying that the ability to test the above hypothesis is
limited. Climate models, for example, cannot properly simulate
this transport owing to various limitations, such as coarse
spatial resolution and missing physics. We propose a series of
laboratory experiments with a rotating table to investigate the
evolution of freshwater discharged along the western boundary of
a northern hemisphere ocean. O