NASA’s GRACE satellites (artist’s concept) measured Atlantic Ocean bottom pressure as an indicator of deep ocean current speed. In 2009, this pattern of above-average (blue) and below-average (red) seafloor pressure revealed a temporary slowing of the deep currents. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A team of NASA and university scientists has developed a new way to use satellite measurements to track changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which are a driving force in global climate. The finding opens a path to better monitoring and understanding of how ocean circulation is changing and what the changes may mean for future climate.
In the Atlantic, currents at the ocean surface, eg Gulf Stream, carry sun-warmed water from the tropics NE. As the water moves through colder regions, it sheds its heat. By the time it gets to Greenland, it’s so cold and dense that it sinks a couple of miles down into the ocean depths. There it turns and flows back south. This open loop of shallow and deep currents is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – part of the “conveyor belt” of ocean currents circulating water, heat and nutrients around the globe and affecting climate.
Since AMOC moves so much heat, any change in it is likely to be an important indicator of how our planet is responding to warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases. In the last decade, a few isolated measurements have suggested that the AMOC is slowing down and moving less water. Many researchers are expecting the current to weaken as a consequence of global warming, but natural variations may also be involved. To better understand what is going on, scientists would like to have consistent observations over time that cover the entire Atlantic.
“This [new] satellite approach allows us to improve projections of future changes and – quite literally – get to the bottom of what drives ocean current changes,” said Felix Landerer, JPL. They used data from the twin satellites of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. Launched in 2002, GRACE provides a monthly record of tiny changes in Earth’s gravitational field, caused by changes in the amount of mass below the satellites. The mass of Earth’s land surfaces doesn’t change much over the course of a month; but the mass of water on or near Earth’s surface does, eg as ice sheets melt and water is pumped from underground aquifers. GRACE has proven invaluable in tracking these changes.
Landerer’s team developed a way to isolate in the GRACE gravity data the signal of tiny pressure differences at the ocean bottom due to changes in the deep ocean currents.
The new measurements agreed well with estimates from a network of ocean buoys that span the Atlantic Ocean near 26 degrees north latitude. The agreement gives confidence the technique can be expanded to provide estimates throughout the Atlantic. In fact, the GRACE measurements showed that a significant weakening in the overturning circulation, which the buoys recorded in the winter of 2009-10, extended several thousand miles north and south of the buoys’ latitude.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL065730/abstract?campaign=wolacceptedarticle http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-finds-new-way-to-track-ocean-currents-from-space
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