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posted by janrinok on Friday November 11 2016, @04:12PM   Printer-friendly

A new study by University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researchers found that the Indian Ocean's Agulhas Current is getting wider rather than strengthening. The findings, which have important implications for global climate change, suggest that intensifying winds in the region may be increasing the turbulence of the current, rather than increasing its flow rate.

Using measurements collected during three scientific cruises to the Agulhas Current, the Indian Ocean's version of the Gulf Stream, researchers estimated the long-term transport of the current leveraging 22 years of satellite data. They found the Agulhas Current has broadened, not strengthened, since the early 1990s, due to more turbulence from increased eddying and meandering.

One of the strongest currents in the world, the Agulhas Current flows along the east coast of South Africa, transporting warm, salty water away from the tropics toward the poles. The Agulhas, which is hundreds of kilometers long and over 2,000-meters deep, transports large amounts of ocean heat and is considered to have an influence not only on the regional climate of Africa, but on global climate as part of the ocean's global overturning circulation.

There's no knowing if the trend will affect the monsoon.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday November 11 2016, @06:43PM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday November 11 2016, @06:43PM (#425758) Journal

    There's also no knowing if the widening is due to simply being more shallow. Warmer water rises, and satellites can't see more than a few inches deep and can't measure anything but surface temps.

    A slight temperature change could bring warmer water to the surface, but because the flow rate is the same, this warm water has nowhere go other than to spreads out. This says the effects are likely to be local rather than global.

    The article more or less confirms this:

    "Increased eddying and meandering could act to decrease poleward heat transport, while increasing coastal upwelling and the exchange of pollutants and larvae across the current from the coast to the open ocean."

    So warm water rises, and stays at the top of the water column absorbing more sunlight and heat, evaporating, and brewing more storms. Maybe a new Sargasso sea? But probably good(-ish) news for the Antarctic ice cap, as increased flow would only hasten its demise.

    So you are spot on. The Ocean is getting a comb-over.

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