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Natural Science Forum / Earth Science / Oceanography / October 2006Change in underwater currents?
A few years ago, I read an article in _Scientific American_ about the "rivers" and "waterfalls" involved in sub-surface ocean currents. The author made the point that those currents involved many times as much water as flowed in the rivers we know. One of teh driving forces I remember was surface water originally from the tropics meeting the shelf ice around Antartica. Some water froze out, leaving higher salinity, and the rest cooled to 4 C. The cold, salty, water sank; and this drove currents which travelled all the way to the Arctic region. Well, since he wrote that, the shelf ice has been diminishing. How does this affect this process? I would guess at a diminished volume at the same temperature, but that is a guess. Has anyone worked this out? And has anyone a picture of the consequences of the change? As you might guess from my source, I know a little science, but that doesn't include oceanology. > A few years ago, I read an article in _Scientific American_ about the > "rivers" and "waterfalls" involved in sub-surface ocean currents. The [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > As you might guess from my source, I know a little science, but that > doesn't include oceanology. The uni of Saouthampton England did some recent work on ocean currents that indicated there might be a surecease to the flows of surface and deeper currents. The OA temps of the Arctic remained at about minus 2 degrees Centigrade for centuries due to the physics of watersolutes. The overall balance was that salt waer was more dense and flowed out the deep vents tot the east of the Americas all the way to the Wadel Sea off Antarctica. The ice flowed out the same tube and also into the Pacific keeping the ratio and the temperature the same all year through. This year the influx of water from western Northern Europe and Russia has been augmented by the late hurricane season sending almost all its storms up through Bermuda/Acorez to the Berents Sea in the Arctic. It will be worth watching for developments there I am sure. Sea Level maps of Low pressure areas (such as the remains of the hurricanes flowing into the northern stretches of the North Atlantic) can be found in the archives here: http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/tkfaxbraar.htm Note where they broached last year. They entered Canada via the USA and left for here and southern Norway via Newfoundland IIRC. You might also want to take a look at the temperatures of the Baltic over a time period from here: http://ocean.dmi.dk/satellite/index.html You might get more data from the site owners. I have been promissed some when they get set up for it. It's the warmest and most brackish sea in the north and feeds almost straight into the Arctic. |
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