AMOC

The new current, the North Icelandic Jet, feeds the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant pattern known as the "great ocean conveyor belt," or by the disconcerting acronym AMOC.

Reuters: Press Release 2011

The AMOC is the giant circulation in the Atlantic with warm and salty seawater flowing northward in the upper ocean and cold seawater flowing southward at depth.

innovations-report 2009

One of these events, the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation AMOC, has been linked to a series of what are termed Heinrich events.

Ars Technica Kyle Niemeyer 2011

However, the newly confirmed North Icelandic Jet appears to contribute more to the deeper part of the AMOC than the Greenland current does, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Reuters: Press Release 2011

The most significant result of this study was that the Heinrich events, rather than causing or occurring at the beginning of the AMOC collapse, happened when the AMOC was at a minimum.

Ars Technica Kyle Niemeyer 2011

This decrease, in turn, was caused by freshwater flux from ice sheets due to small changes in climate, and led to warmer ocean waters the AMOC helps cool the ocean through convective mixing.

Ars Technica Kyle Niemeyer 2011

If that happened, and the AMOC was disrupted or slowed at the place in the far north where the warm water at the surface cools and sinks -- called the overturning -- it could eventually lead to a colder Northern Hemisphere.

Reuters: Press Release 2011

Temperatures began rising about 1,000-2,000 years before each Heinrich event, coinciding with a decrease in the AMOC.

Ars Technica Kyle Niemeyer 2011

"Present thinking contends that increased fresh water delivered to the North Atlantic, due to melting ice and increased precipitation under a warming climate, will slow down or halt the overturning" of the AMOC, said study co-author Robert Pickart of Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution.

Reuters: Press Release 2011

New data and simulation results published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science suggest that Heinrich events occurred during the AMOC decline, which forced warmer water beneath the surface of the ice sheets, causing the edges to break off-similar to recent ice loss after the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves.

Ars Technica Kyle Niemeyer 2011

When the Hollywood blockbuster was made, researchers knew relatively little about the state of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), an ocean system that transports warm water and nutrients around the Atlantic Ocean.

Is a vital ocean current just decades away from catastrophic collapse? #author.fullName} 2024