High resolution ocean modelling has found the world’s strongest ocean currents, which play key roles in fisheries and ocean ecosystems, will experience more intense marine heatwaves than the global average over coming decades.
Using a high-resolution ocean model, CLEX researchers unexpectedly found 80% of the transport in the warm water layer, known as Circumpolar Deep Water, approaches Antarctica in the colder regions.
Solar heating of surface waters in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, along with turbulent mixing that moves this heat into the colder deep-reaching Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, play a crucial role in shaping oceanic heat transport pathways