Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-year-2-of-the-earth-sciences-geology-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/paper-1/10/a/i/solution

There are four well-mixed reservoirs: Mediterranean surface/deep and Black Sea surface/deep . Use the actual drawing’s arrow endpoints: leaves , enters from , and starts in and enters . With as positive water-mass transport rates, the four steady conservation of mass equations are
Adding them cancels every internal transport and gives the whole-system requirement . There is no stated evaporation, precipitation or other external transport to add.
The schematic endpoints are unusual for the conventional two-layer exchange picture: its Gibraltar outflow is drawn in the surface box, and its Black Sea surface inflow descends into the Mediterranean deep box. Moving to , to , and the source of to would define a different, more conventional idealization. The displayed equations consistently follow the supplied drawing; the same endpoint convention is used in the following two parts.

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