THE AXIAL ANGULAR-MOMENTUM OF THE GENERAL-CIRCULATION OF THE OCEANS

With the Hamburg geostrophic ocean general circulation model, the temp oral variation of the angular momentum of the oceans is studied. The i nput wind stresses consist of climatological winds plus the deviations of the actual winds 1981-1989. The motion part of the angular momenta of the two hemispheres resembles the (counter-phase) behaviour of the corresponding atmospheric angular momentum. The dominating matter par t however shows no phase shift between the hemispheres. The sum of the angular momenta of the solid Earth and the atmosphere is deduced from observations; in principle it should be inversely correlated to the o ceanic angular momentum. A first attempt to recognize the correlation between these empirical data and the theoretical values is described.