Geothermal heating in the Panama Basin. Part I: hydrography of the basin

Banyte, D.; Morales Maqueda, M.; Hobbs, R.; Smeed, D.A.; Megann, A.; Recalde, S.

Abstract

The Panama Basin serves as a laboratory to investigate abyssal water upwelling. The basin has only a single abyssal water inflow pathway through the narrow Ecuador Trench. The estimated critical inflow through the Trench reaches 0.34 ± 0.07 m s−1, resulting in an abyssal water volume inflow of 0.29 ± 0.07 Sv. The same trench carries the return flow of basin waters that starts just 200 m above the bottom and is approximately 400 m deeper than the depth of the next possible deep water exchange pathway at the Carnegie Ridge Saddle. The curvature of temperature‐salinity diagrams is used to differentiate the effect of geothermal heating on the deep Panama Basin waters that was found to reach as high as 2200 m depth, which is about 500 m above the upper boundary of the abyssal water layer.

Citation

Banyte, D., Morales Maqueda, M., Hobbs, R., Smeed, D., Megann, A., & Recalde, S. (2018). Geothermal heating in the Panama Basin. Part I: hydrography of the basin. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 123(10), 7382-7392. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018jc013868

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 21, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 21, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 21, 2018
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 21, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
• Print ISSN: 2169-9291
• Electronic ISSN: 2169-9291
• Publisher: American Geophysical Union
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 123
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 7382-7392
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2018jc013868