The upper regions of ocean circulation are fed predominantly by broad upwelling across surfaces at mid-depth over the main ocean basins (rising blue-green-yellow arrows). However, evidence has shown that waters rise to the surface not so much in the North Pacific, but in the Southern Ocean - a distinction that Marshall and Speer illustrate in their updated diagram.Ī new schematic emphasizes the role of the Southern Ocean in the world’s ocean circulation. The diagram depicts warm water moving northward, plunging deep into the North Atlantic then coursing south as cold water toward Antarctica then back north again, where waters rise and warm in the North Pacific. Marshall and Kevin Speer, a professor of physical oceanography at Florida State University, have published a paper in Nature Geoscience in which they review past work, examine the Southern Ocean’s influence on climate and draw up a new schematic for ocean circulation.įor decades, a “conveyor belt” model, developed by paleoclimatologist Wallace Broecker, has served as a simple cartoon of ocean circulation. “The Southern Ocean is the window by which the interior of the ocean connects to the atmosphere above.” ![]() “There’s a lot of carbon and heat in the interior ocean,” says John Marshall, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography at MIT. The Southern Ocean, according to observations and models, is a site where strong winds blowing along the Antarctic Circumpolar Current dredge waters up from the depths. Recently, scientists have found evidence that the missing piece may lie in the Southern Ocean - the vast ribbon of water encircling Antarctica. Filling in this missing piece of the circulation, and developing theories and models that capture it, may help researchers understand and predict the ocean’s role in climate and climate change. ![]() To study how this system affects climate, scientists have largely focused on the North Atlantic, a major basin where water sinks, burying carbon and heat deep in the ocean’s interior.īut what goes down must come back up, and it’s been a mystery where, and how, deep waters circulate back to the surface. This global system plays a key role in climate change, storing and releasing heat throughout the world. The world’s oceans act as a massive conveyor, circulating heat, water and carbon around the planet.
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