A major finding in the field of oceanology is that giant underwater waves as high as 500 meters have a crucial role in the ocean’s heat and carbon distribution. The results of the studies published in AGU Advances.
A team of international researchers, headed by the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and University of California San Diego have recently been studying the giant underwater waves and other forms of turbulence in the Atlantic ocean. They found out that these underwater waves played a vital role in the distribution of heat and carbon storage.
And the current climate model failed to reflect on the significance of these underwater phenomena.
The Importance of the Giant Underwater Waves in the Heat and Carbon Distribution on a Global Scale
If you know about overturning circulation, where warm water from the tropical area moves toward the pole and cools down, and sink deep into the ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean plays a major role in the distribution of heat and carbon storage at the global scale. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has a main role in this. Ocean circulation redistributed heat to the polar regions, where it melts ice and carbon to the deep ocean, where it can be stored for thousands of years.
Carbon Distribution in Oceans (Image Credit:Laura Cimoli/GLODAP)
Over the past year, scientists have been investigating whether AMOC may be a factor in the Arctic has loss so much ice cover, while some Antarctic ice sheets are growing. Previously heat in the Atlantic Ocean takes several hundred years to reach the Antarctic.
Cambridge University scientists using a combination of remote sensing, ship-based measurements, and data from autonomous floats have found that heat from the North Atlantic Ocean reaches faster to Antarctica than previously imagined.
Dr, Laura Cimoli from the Cambridge Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics said that
“If you were to take a picture of the ocean interior, you would see a lot of complex dynamics at work, “If you were to take a picture of the ocean interior, you would see a lot of complex dynamics at work,”
Another scientist from the University of Cambridge Earth Science Department Dr. Ali Mashayek said “ The Atlantic Ocean is special in how it affects the global climate, It has a strong pole-to-pole circulation from its upper reaches to the deep ocean. The water also moves faster at the surface than it does in the deep ocean.”
Heat and Carbon Circulate across the Different Densities of Ocean Level
Oceans have different densities of layers with colder, denser water at the bottom and warmer, lighter at the top layer. The heat and carbon transport happens at the particular layer, but heat and carbon can also move between density layers,it brings deep water back to the surface.
Small-scale turbulence facilitated the movement of heat and carbon, this phenomenon is not fully represented in the climate models. The difference estimate showed that turbulence mostly affects the class of density layers associated with the core of the deep waters moving southward from the North Atlantic to the Southern Ocean. This means that the heat and carbon carried by these water masses have a high chance of being moved across different density levels.
“Climate models do account for turbulence, but mostly in how it affects ocean circulation, But we’ve found that turbulence is vital in its own right, and plays a key role in how much carbon and heat gets absorbed by the ocean, and where it gets stored,” said Laura Cimoli
Now the researchers suggest an urgent need for the installment of turbulence sensors on global observational arrays and a more accurate representation of small-scale turbulence in climate models to enable scientists to make more accurate projections of the future effects of climate change.