{"id":21625,"date":"2016-09-10T18:37:51","date_gmt":"2016-09-10T23:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21625"},"modified":"2016-09-10T18:37:51","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T23:37:51","slug":"how-climate-change-could-jam-the-worlds-ocean-circulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21625","title":{"rendered":"How Climate Change Could Jam The World&#8217;s Ocean Circulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/feature\/will_climate_change_jam_the_global_ocean_conveyor_belt\/3030\/\">How Climate Change Could Jam\u00a0The World&#8217;s Ocean Circulation<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"dek\"><em>Scientists are closely monitoring a key current in the North Atlantic to see if rising sea temperatures and increased freshwater from melting ice are altering the \u201cocean conveyor belt\u201d \u2014 a vast oceanic stream that plays a major role in the global climate system.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/images\/features\/KulusukGreenland_MariuszKluzniakFlickr800.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"credit\">Mariusz Kluzniak\/Flickr<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption\">Melting ice flows into the northern Atlantic Ocean in eastern Greenland.<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"caption\">Susan Lozier is having a busy year. From May to September, her oceanographic team is making five research cruises across the North Atlantic, hauling up dozens of moored instruments that track currents far beneath the surface. The data they retrieve will be the first complete set documenting how North Atlantic waters are shifting \u2014 and should help solve the mystery of whether there is a long-term slowdown in ocean circulation. \u201cWe have a lot of people very interested in the data,\u201d says Lozier, a physical oceanographer at Duke University.<\/div>\n<p>A similar string of moorings across the middle of the Atlantic,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rapid.ac.uk\/rw\/images\/diagrams\/moc_diagram_f.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">delving as deep as 3.7 miles<\/a>\u00a0from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas, has already detected a disturbing drop in this ocean\u2019s massive circulation pattern. Since those moorings were installed in 2004, they have seen the Atlantic current wobble and weaken by as much as 30 percent, turning down the dial on a dramatic heat pump that transports warmth toward northern Europe. Turn that dial down too much and Europe will go into a deep chill.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers have been worried about an Atlantic slowdown for years. The Atlantic serves as the engine for the planet\u2019s conveyor belt of ocean currents: The massive amount of cooler water that sinks in the North Atlantic stirs up that entire ocean and drives currents in the Southern and Pacific oceans, too. \u201cIt is the key component\u201d in global circulation, says Ellen Martin, a paleoclimate and ocean current researcher at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Climate Change Could Jam\u00a0The World&#8217;s Ocean Circulation Scientists are closely monitoring a key current in the North Atlantic to see if rising sea temperatures and increased freshwater from melting ice are altering the \u201cocean conveyor belt\u201d \u2014 a vast oceanic stream that plays a major role in the global climate system. Mariusz Kluzniak\/Flickr Melting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,14250,13752,9761,7163],"class_list":["post-21625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-e360","tag-nicola-jones","tag-ocean-currents","tag-yale-environment-360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21626,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions\/21626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}