Earth, being 71 percent covered in water, is influenced by the ocean and its movements.
Earth, being 71 percent covered in water, is influenced by the ocean and its movements. In the Atlantic Ocean, a system of connected currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), moves water throughout the world’s oceans powered by a combination of winds and ocean density. It not only distributes the ocean’s heat, moisture, and nutrients, but regulates the Earth’s climate and weather.
As the climate is continuously changing and the atmosphere is warming, many scientists fear that fresh water from melting polar ice sheets could significantly disrupt—or collapse—the AMOC. While a decline of the AMOC would have grave consequences, a collapse would be truly catastrophic. However, studies about the AMOC’s long term future are uncertain. Instead of predicting the future, a team of scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) quantified the past to help inform where we could be going.
In a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists found that the AMOC has not declined in the last 60 years. Authors Nicholas P. Foukal, adjunct scientist in Physical Oceanography at WHOI and assistant professor at the University of Georgia; Jens Terhaar, affiliated scientist at WHOI and senior scientist at the University of Bern; and Linus Vogt, visiting student at WHOI when he started to work on this study and now scientist at LOCEAN, Sorbonne Université, say their results mean that the AMOC is currently more stable than expected.
Read more at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Image: Previous AMOC studies relied on sea surface temperature data. A CTD rosette device measures the ocean’s conductivity, temperature, and depth by collecting water samples at varying depths, making models more accurate than ever. (©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
