A new study led by researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York found that the Kuroshio Current Extension is sensitive to global climate change and has the potential to warm greatly with increased carbon dioxide levels.
A new study led by researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York found that the Kuroshio Current Extension is sensitive to global climate change and has the potential to warm greatly with increased carbon dioxide levels.
Ocean currents embody motion, snaking their way from the tropics to the poles and back, shifting vast quantities of water from moment to moment. But they are also incredibly old, following their basic course for millions of years.
Tracing a history written in water is the work of paleoceanographers such as Adriane Lam, Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in Binghamton University’s Department of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies. Lam is the lead author of “Pliocene to earliest Pleistocene (5–2.5 Ma) Reconstruction of the Kuroshio Current Extension Reveals a Dynamic Current,” recently published in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. Co-authors include Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Molly Patterson, as well as Kenneth MacLeod of the University of Missouri, Solveig Schilling of the University of Texas at Austin, R. Mark Leckie of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Andrew Fraass of England’s University of Bristol, and Nicholas Venti of the University of Delaware.
The major western boundary current in the northern Pacific Ocean, the Kuroshio Current and Extension, is analogous to the Gulf Stream, which flows along North America’s east coast. Driven by the wind, boundary currents are the workhorses of the ocean, moving heat, salt and gases from the equatorial seas to the middle latitudes, Lam explained.
Read more at: Binghamton University
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