Sentences with phrase «surface water circulation»

The Malaspina Expedition, led by the Spanish National Research Council, has demonstrated that there are five large accumulations of plastic debris in the open ocean that match with the five major twists of oceanic surface water circulation.

Not exact matches

The Atlantic Ocean surface circulation is an important part of the Earth's global climate, moving warm water from the tropics towards the poles.

But research published yesterday in the journal Nature rebuts this idea, suggesting that it was changes in ocean circulation, not winds, that predominantly led the deep water to surface near Antarctica and exhale carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

As these winds enhance ocean circulation, they may be encouraging carbon - rich waters to rise from the deep, say the team, meaning that surface water is less able to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.

The simulations suggest that over decades, these warming events dramatically perturb the ocean surface, affecting the flow of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of currents that acts like a conveyor belt moving water around the planet.

Real - world data back the claim: Accumulations of calcium carbonate in deep - sea Pacific sediments show that the Pliocene ocean experienced huge shifts at the time, with waters churning all the way from the surface down to about three kilometers deep, as would be expected from a conveyor belt — type circulation.

A new study has found that turbulent mixing in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, which has a profound effect on global ocean circulation and climate, varies with the strength of surface eddies — the ocean equivalent of storms in the atmosphere — and possibly also wind speeds.

One result is a flow of cold deep water toward the equator and warm surface water toward the poles, and this «overturning circulation» plays a crucial role in moving heat around the globe.

Salinity of the surface waters can be influenced by the amount of river water flowing into the oceans, yet no computer models of ancient ocean circulation had included this variable.

Prevailing scientific wisdom asserts that the deceleration of circulation diminishes the ocean's ability to absorb anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere as surface waters warm and become saturated with CO2.

«The weaker overturning circulation brings less naturally CO2 - rich deep waters to the surface, which limits how much of that gas in the deep ocean escapes to the atmosphere.

The deep circulation that drives warm surface waters north is weakening, leading to a cooling of the north Atlantic relative to the rest of the oceans.

The thermohaline circulation of the global ocean is controlled in part by freshwater inputs to northern seas that regulate the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation by reducing surface seawater density.

There is also a contribution of excess atmospheric CO2 absorption introduced to deep - water masses from dense, cold CO2 - rich surface waters at downwelling sites (e.g., North Atlantic), which then move through the oceans via meridional overturning circulation.

Presently, much of the Atlantic Ocean is well oxygenated (Figure 1) relative to the North Indian and Pacific Oceans, where bottom water O2 concentrations are lower because of the biological removal of O2 as thermohaline circulation moves deep waters across ocean basins from the North and South Atlantic towards the North Pacific, in isolation from the surface ocean.

Shallow, flat tanks with a large surface area will provide adequate light and promote good water circulation around each piece of coral.

Where the poleward & equatorward currents of this intensified circulation converge — the centre of the gyres — surface water is pumped downwards into the ocean interior in a process known as Ekman pumping.

A tropical cyclone is the generic term for a non-frontal synoptic scale low - pressure system over tropical or sub-tropical waters with organized convection (i.e. thunderstorm activity) and definite cyclonic surface wind circulation (Holland 1993).

Another possibility might be a slowing of deep circulation (not sure how much there is, mind), in which case the opposite occurs, and the surface waters heat up even faster, leading to yet more rapid surface melt, smaller winter ice volumes and so on.

Unlikely: this idea was based on the hypothesis that the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, which carries warm surface water to northern Europe, could be halted by the influx of fresh water from melting Arctic ice.

Off California, the combined effects of sluggish circulation in semi-isolated basins, continental margin depths within the oxygen minimum zone, and high surface water productivity all contribute to accumulation of laminated, organic - rich sediments in the Santa Barbara basin.

It stands to reason that the oceans haven't been that warm in a while but since the average temperature of the whole mass of water is so dependent on circulation (it's only the surface temperature that's constrained by its interactions with the atmosphere and space), I suppose a plausible history of that particular value would be very hard to reconstruct.

so surely the fresh water would get in to the North Atlantic circulation without surface melting.

Ultimately if the freshwater melt was a dominant (which seems hard to believe given the scale of the wind - driven gyre transport) factor, it would be entrained into the gyres at the surface and you'd see an overall freshening of North Atlantic surface waters to make the whole system more like the Pacific, which has a much weaker meridional overturning circulation.

The deep ocean and surface water don't overturn because of differences in density, so the exchange is via global circulation.

Using an ocean circulation model for the shelf, the authors find that surface temperatures may increase by 0.5 to 2.0 °C, seasonal surface salinity may drop by up to 2 PSS in some areas, and that Haida Eddies will strengthen, as will the Vancouver Island Coastal Current and freshwater discharges into coastal waters.

Surface tension of water is «ratcheted up» (in multimers of H2O [this is the phase change], the exact mechanism for which I prefer to keep secret at the moment) and it is the ensuing structure (pervection) that explains the missing lubrication (Lorenz) in our atmospheric circulation.

Liang, X., D. P. Lettenmaier, E. F. Wood, and S. J. Burges, 1994: A simple hydrologically based model of land - surface water and energy fluxes for general - circulation models.

A simple model of this process is an increased vertical circulation in the ocean, such as an enhanced PDO, that brings cooler water to the surface faster and sequesters the warmer water faster.

The vertically integrated inventory of human emitted CO2 in the oceans is (not surprisingly) much greater in areas of cold deep convection, especially in the northern Atlantic (the falling leg of the thermohaline circulation), and much less in the tropics where the ocean is strongly stratified; absorption in the tropics really is more in the near - surface waters.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)- the transport of warm tropical surface water northward - is indeed propelled by dense water sinking in the North Atlantic and travelling equatorward in the deeper layers, but it also has a wind - driven component to it.

The circulation is asymmetric, with conversion to dense waters in restricted regions at high latitudes and the return to the surface involving slow upwelling and diffusive processes over much larger geographic regions.

3) That this is a continuous process, so we are really seeing a vertical circulation, where the original surface water is going to reach an equilibrium T2a (dependent on turbulence), but which is > T2, and it will eventuall be diplaced upwards as well.

An El Nino analysis released by the national weather service last week says sea surface and sub-surface temperature anomalies were consistent with El Niño during December, but the overall atmospheric circulation continued to show only limited coupling with the warm water.

A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models

Um... while the oceans as a whole would have to cool, the sea surface would have to warm up substantially in order to transfer lots of heat to the air (and in order to warm up substantially, I suppose there would have to be reduced circulation with cold deeper waters).

Higher temperatures in polar regions and a decrease in the salinity of surface water due to melting ice sheets could interrupt such circulation, the report says.

Liang, X., D. P. Lettenmaier, E. F. Wood, and S. J. Burges, 1994: A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models.

So warmer - than - normal surface waters in the South Atlantic created by the changes in atmospheric circulation during an El Niño should be transported northward into the North Atlantic (and vice versa for a La Niña).

That process releases warm water from below the surface of the PWP, shifts it to the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, releases heat there through evaporation, which causes changes in atmospheric circulation, in turn causing SST outside of the tropical Pacific to vary.

The waters that underlie the near - surface subtropical waters have freshened due to equatorward circulation of the freshened subpolar surface waters; in particular, the fresh intermediate water layer (at ~ 1,000 m) in the SH has freshened in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Meanwhile back at New Guinea, the cold water left over from the previous La Nina is now being forced down and it enters the subsurface circulation and in about 9 months, it will surface at the Galapagos Islands, speed up the Trade Winds and we have a La Nina.

You may be familiar with part of this circulation, the Gulf Stream, which brings warm, tropical surface water northward along the East Coast of the United States and funnels toward the poles.

This resulted from the combined effects of high sea surface temperatures in open water areas and the effects of atmospheric circulation drawing warm air into the region.

The Pentagon report describes a scenario in which human - caused global warming leads to a near - term collapse of the ocean's thermohaline circulation, which brings warm surface waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, warming parts of Western Europe.

The warming reached a depth of about 10,000 feet (4,000 meters), interfering with the normal circulation process in which colder surface water descends, taking oxygen and nutrients deep into the ocean.

When the Walker circulation weakens or reverses, an El Niño results, causing the ocean surface to be warmer than average, as upwelling of cold water occurs less or not at all.

The overturning circulation pushes water through the Atlantic Basin, distributing heat as it moves warmer surface water from the tropics toward Greenland and the high northern latitudes and carries colder, deeper water from the North Atlantic southward.

The unusually high sea ice surface temperatures reflect a shift in ocean circulation, enhancing the import of warm, Atlantic - derived waters into the Arctic Ocean.

So, it is not surprising that those modellers who «need» to get warm surface waters to move into the depths of the oceans, and remain sequestered there for long periods of time, would turn to the physical mechanism of this vertical circulation system.