It's a-blowin' in the wind over Southern Ocean

William Atkins
Tuesday, 16 March 2010 00:46

Science - Climate

Australian and U.S. scientists have concluded that the winds over the Southern Ocean hold the key to how its surface waters help to transfer heat and carbon dioxide between the deeper waters and the atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere.

The research of Drs. Jean-Baptiste Sallée and Steve R. Rintoul (both from the CSIRO-CMAR/CAWCR, Castrav Espanade, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia), and Dr. Kevin G. Speer (from Oceanography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A.) was published online on March 14, 2010, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The conclusions of their paper “Zonally asymmetric response of the Southern Ocean mixed-layer depth to the Southern Annular Mode” (doi:10.1038/ngeo812) are important to better understanding how climate change will affect weather conditions in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Australian and U.S. researchers—using Argo profiling floats to analyze temperatures and salinity in the waters and air—found that the mixed layer (the surface waters) of the Southern Ocean are more important than previously thought in how it affects the atmosphere and ocean waters in the Southern Hemisphere.

The mixed layer works together with wind patterns above the Southern Ocean to provide the key element in the amount of heat and carbon dioxide that are exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere.

In other words, changes in the winds above the Southern Ocean directly cause changes in sea surface temperature and, specifically, in the amounts of heat and carbon dioxide that regularly are transferred between the deeper part of the ocean and the atmosphere.

And, the scientists found that this relationship is “more sensitive than we expected.”

They found more surprising results from their research study. Please read page two.