A climate window in the Southern Ocean

By EmmaZahn on Sat, 03/03/2012 - 9:12am |

An updated circulation model reveals the Southern Ocean as a powerful influence on climate change.

The world’s oceans act as a massive conveyor, circulating heat, water and carbon around the planet. This global system plays a key role in climate change, storing and releasing heat throughout the world. 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.

But what goes down must come back up, and it’s been a mystery where, and how, deep waters circulate back to the surface. 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.

URL:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/southern-ocean-climate-0228.html

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Comments

Thank you for the link. It is a really interesting subject and easy to read with a map showing the water circulation.

by trkingmomoe on Sat, 03/03/2012 - 9:02pm

Glad you liked it. The writing style was good. It suited its subject and its audience.

by EmmaZahn on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:07am

A climate window in the Southern Ocean

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