Thermohaline circulation research
- Colbert, Angela. “Slowdown of the Motion of the Ocean.” Ask NASA Climate, 5 Jun. 2023, https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3266/slowdown-of-the-motion-of-the-ocean/.
- “When water evaporates and gives up some heat to the air, the sea gets colder and a little saltier. Plus, when sea ice forms, it freezes the surface water leaving behind salt, which makes the remaining seawater saltier. Once this colder, saltier water becomes dense enough, it sinks to the deep ocean. Warmer, less dense water from the Gulf Stream rushes in to replace the water that sinks. This motion helps power a global “conveyor belt” of ocean currents – known as thermohaline circulation – that moves heat around Earth.”
- cold and salty water has higher density and sinks from the surface to form deep ocean currents, while warmer/less salty water floats easier
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2021 report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_final.pdf
- “The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is very likely to weaken over the 21st century for all emissions scenarios. While there is high confidence in the 21st century decline, there is only low confidence in the magnitude of the trend. There is medium confidence that there will not be an abrupt collapse before 2100. If such a collapse were to occur, it would very likely cause abrupt shifts in regional weather patterns and water cycle, such as a southward shift in the tropical rain belt, weakening of the African and Asian monsoons and strengthening of Southern Hemisphere monsoons, and drying in Europe.” (C.3.4, p27)
- “It is [...] extremely likely that human influence contributed to the pattern of observed changes in near-surface ocean salinity.” (A.1.4, p5)
- “Human influence is very likely the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea ice area between 1979–1988 and 2010–2019[.]” (A.1.5, p5)
- “It is virtually certain that the global upper ocean (0–700 m) has warmed since the 1970s and extremely likely that human influence is the main driver. It is virtually certain that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main driver of current global acidification of the surface open ocean. There is high confidence that oxygen levels have dropped in many upper ocean regions since the mid-20th century and medium confidence that human influence contributed to this drop.” (A.1.6, p5)
- Bauer, Jennifer. “Climate Change is Weakening The Ocean’s Currents. Here’s Why That Matters.” Florida Museum, 7 May. 2019, https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/earth-systems/blog/climate-change-is-weakening-the-oceans-currents-heres-why-that-matters/.
- Kappuss, Sarah. “Differential Heating of Earth’s Surface.” Evergreen Valley College, 15 Aug. 2023, https://bio.libretexts.org/@go/page/103310.
- National Geographic. “The Coriolis Effect: Earth's Rotation and Its Effect on Weather.” National Geographic, 19 Oct. 2023, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/coriolis-effect/
- England, Matthew, et al. “A huge Atlantic ocean current is slowing down. If it collapses, La Niña could become the norm for Australia.” UNSW Newsroom, 07 Jun. 2022, https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/huge-atlantic-ocean-current-slowing-down-if-it-collapses-la-ni%C3%B1a-could-become-norm.
- Katija, Katani. “Ocean Currents: Jellyfish and the Moon.” National Geographic. 23 Jun. 2011, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-currents-jellyfish-and-moon/ Online video.
- “...and then turn on the laser. And when that happens it’s magic, because what you can see, right, are these particle displacements, and that’s solely due to this animal swimming.
- diurnal vertical migrations are the largest movement of biomass on our planet, and it happens daily.
- copepods migrate 150m each way, reports of them migrating 200-500m in each direction. They are about a mm across. The relative distance a wildebeest travels in a year is the same distance these guys travel in one day.
- swimming animals contribute to currents
- animals fertilise their own feeding grounds - migrating from nutrient rich fluid to nutrient poor fluid, dragging nutrient-rich fluid along with them in their wake, fertilisation baby
- “With every contraction and relaxation cycle, you have again these sexy structures called vortex rings in the wake. But then right behind the organism, what you also see is this large volume of fluid that’s being dragged along behind its body. And it’s this mechanism that can allow for large-scale mixing by these migrating organisms.”
- Leonard, J. L. “Density regulation in Sarsia tubulosa (Hydrozoa).” Helgoländer Meeresuntersuchungen, vol. 34, 1980, pp. 55-59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01983541
- Yang, Patricia J. “Rowing jellyfish contract to maintain neutral buoyancy.” Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters, vol. 8, no. 3, 2018, pp. 147-152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.taml.2018.03.001
- “Our mathematical model reveals that jellyfish contract to offset their sinking. This behavior is invariant: Despite the background flow conditions, jellyfish contract as if they are oriented upright in a quiescent fluid. Our study suggests that jellyfish operate in open-loop without feedback from their environment.” (abstract)