From Florida State University:
Kevin Speer has a “new paradigm” for describing how the world’s oceans circulate — and with it he may help reshape science’s understanding of the processes by which wind, water, sunlight and other factors interact and influence the planet’s climate.
A Florida State University professor of oceanography with a passion for teaching, Speer and a colleague recently published a significant paper in the respected journal Nature Geoscience.
Working with John Marshall, an oceanography professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Speer reviewed — or essentially synthesized — vast amounts of previous data on ocean circulation (including their own earlier papers). As a result, they have created what Speer calls a new paradigm in the study of ocean currents on a global scale.
Here’s how it works: Basically, the oceans, together with the atmosphere, rebalance heat on the planet. The sun shines on the Earth and heats up the tropics more than the poles. Near the poles, the ocean is cold and the water sinks; near the equator, the surface of the ocean is inviting and warm — and floats on top of the colder deep water.
So the question is this: Where does the water that goes down come back up?
Speer, Marshall and other oceanographers now believe that it comes back up in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica — not as much in the warm oceans as had been previously thought.
“We’re not saying that nothing comes up in the rest of the World Ocean, just that the main thrust is in the Southern Ocean,” Speer said. “To a large extent it’s driven by the wind.”
Very strong winds, to be precise.
In the rough waters around Antarctica, sailors call those winds the “Roaring Forties” and the “Furious Fifties.” They originate near the Equator, where hot air rises and then is pushed toward the North and South poles by cooler air that rushes in to take its place.
The resulting “eddy-driven upwelling” in the Southern Ocean, as Speer characterizes it, may in fact describe the most important process to date that helps scientists understand the role of the ocean and climate.
Speer, who holds a doctorate in physical oceanography from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program, spent years living in France as an oceanographic researcher for a French governmental agency. (Yes, he’s fluent in French.)
Today, from his office in the basement of the Keen Building on the Florida State campus, Speer serves as interim director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute, a warren of intriguing, 1960s-era laboratories just a few steps outside his door. It is there that Speer helps students and postdoctoral researchers learn about how climate works.
The laboratory’s equipment includes a large, vintage rotating table designed nearly a half-century ago by the lab’s founder, Florida State meteorology Professor Richard Pfeffer. (The device may be old, but it’s one of the biggest and best in the United States, Speer says). Here students can recreate the ocean’s churning and study natural phenomena such as the Antarctic circumpolar current.
Speer and his students have been studying ocean currents thanks to $2.5 million in funding from a larger $10 million National Science Foundation grant that FSU shares with eight other universities and institutions worldwide. Research has included releasing tracers and floats into the ocean to study the mixing and spreading of currents.
One of Speer’s graduate students, Druv Balwada, recently took part in a joint U.S.-United Kingdom research program to study ocean currents aboard a ship in the Southern Ocean. To view the cruise blog of the nearly three-month voyage, visit http://dimesuk3.blogspot.com/.
“Our students learn and help in various ways,” Speer said. “They certainly help generate some interesting and lively oceanographic research.
Speer and Marshall’s Nature Geoscience paper is titled “Closure of the Meridional Overturning Circulation Through Southern Ocean Upwelling.” To read an abstract or purchase the paper, click here.
– Elizabeth Bettendorf
Hi Smokey,
Please examine the 15fps AIRS data animation of global CO2 at
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
It is difficult to see the impact of humanity in this impressive display of nature’s power.
In the animation, does anyone see the impact of industrialization? USA? Europe? India? China? Anything related to humanity? I don’t.
I do see evidence of natural seasonal fluxes on land, and also evidence of deep ocean currents.
The animation does make it look like we Canadians and the Russians have lots of heavy industry emitting megatonnes of deadly CO2 in the far northern Arctic. Not so.
I think atmospheric CO2 flux and concentration is overwhelmingly natural!
So does anybody know what the ocean water Temperatures would be in late spring in the Denmark Straight, between Iceland and Greenland, and near to the Greenland ice shelves ?
Specifically on May 24th 1941. That was the date of the battle of the Denmark Straight, where the Bismark blew up the HMS Hood, with a single 15 inch shell, that went through the side armor and set off all the powder magazines. The ship went down with over 1400 souls; well bodies anyhow, because almost everybody was killed by the pressure of the blasts.
Three people survived the sinking of the Hood, about halfway from Greenland to Iceland about level with the south of Iceland. They must have been in that water for several hous before a destroyer picked them up. How could anyone survive in that water ?
Mr. Smith:
The three survivors of HMS Hood were on rafts for three hours.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3141076/Ted-Briggs-last-survivor-of-the-HMS-Hood-dies-at-85.html
Gymnosperm:
@ur momisugly “offsetting the anthropogenic source.” Yes, you’re right to focus on the use of language by the Global Warming Industry.
“Anthropogenic” implies: “This is a long sciency-looking word, and those who use it are so clever that Joe Public had better believe them.” It occurs to me that goldfish bowls, galoshes and gingerbread men are all anthropogenic. If you went into the pub and asked for an anthropgenic gin and tonic you’d deserve a clip round the ear ‘ole.
“Offsetting” implies “goes part way to mitigating, but only part way”, in the same way that an umbrella can offset Hurricane Isaac. Offsetting has a subsidiary meaning: “Persuading mugs to send money which is pocketed by a pseudogreen organization pretending to fix the climate.”
With a name like “gymnosperm” you must have an interest in the meanings of words!
As a child in a large family, we dined at a large round table. In the center of this talbe was a small round table that we used to transport hot and cold items from one side of the table to the other. Southerners called this rotating table a “Lazy Susan”, i never realized the full scientific potential. Well, other than spinning it real fast could launch a bowl of English peas at my little brother.
Back to Earth science and the Big Warm/Little Warm faux debate. Ocean floor vents release massive flows of a number of ‘elemental’ gases, which are new formed additions to the Earths inventory from the fission products of larger atoms. “Vast pools of liquid CO2 are on the ocean floor” per Geologist Timothy Casey in his “Voclanic CO2” article. In the article “Expanding Earth’s Geothermal Debate” there is an analysis of the erroneous current estimates of this variable fission flux, see http://ClimateRealist.com/?id=10104
Our planet has 2 million cubic miles of fissionable material that has a non-laboratory, variable decay rate. “If you have no description for the macro events, you have no business dictating the conditions of the micro systems.” [Glacial/Interglacial can be described as a macro event, and CO2 a micro system….clarification for climatologists]
Dr. Lurtz said on August 27, 2012 at 5:45 pm:
Fantastic, finally, something that everyone can understand and duplicate [given enough money]: a rotating table. It doesn’t involve a satellite, an unverifiable software program, or a bunch of miss placed temperature measuring sites. Just a good old fashion mechanical device that uses thought and brain power. And, it doesn’t appear to have an agenda other than furthering our understanding of the workings of our planet.
Actually, as Anthony says, this device and others like it have been around for half a century. They are very good for demonstrating a number of characteristics of rotating fluids (some of which are very counter intuitive). You will find videos showing a number of experiments using such a device here. Enjoy
Robert of Ottawa said on August 27, 2012 at 7:03 pm
May I suggest he use a rotating planet for his studies, rather than a one-dimensional model?
Actually Robert it is a three dimensional model – though not spherical. As for conducting an experiment on a planet instead, we are all doing that. The advantage of the laboratory model is that if things go wrong it doesn’t matter.
Refreshing to see new thinking on the dynamics of the oceans as a whole, not just the thin skin we perceive at the surface. This is where most of the earth’s climate energy is, these deep currents hold the key to climate.
The coverage of earth by a layer several km deep of a liquid with anomalously high heat capacity i.e. water is a dominating fact shaping the character of climate dynamics. Relatively small changes in the circulation of the whole ocean have the potential to drive long term climate variations.by adding or removing large amounts of heat to the troposphere.
The effect on heat budget can be reduced to a simple parameter – globally how much vertical mixing takes place in the whole ocean? It not so important exactly where the upwelling and downwelling occur. The ocean is strongly vertically stratified, much warmer at the surface than deep down (except under the poles). Thus ANY significant increase in vertical mixing will always move heat down. Global troposphere temperature could be controlled simply by the sum of global vertical ocean mixing.
“””””…..milodonharlani says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:37 pm
Mr. Smith:
The three survivors of HMS Hood were on rafts for three hours.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3141076/Ted-Briggs-last-survivor-of-the-HMS-Hood-dies-at-85.htm…..”””””
Thanks for that info milo. I just finished reading Bismark and now that you mention it, they did manage to get onto rafts. Briggs described being sucked down till he had resigned himself to drowning, as he couldn’t compete with the rapid descent towards the bottom. Just as he was about to open his mouth and finish it, an explosion below presumably one of the boilers, blew the three of them back to the surface. Otherwise there would have been no survivors. Many more escaped from the Bismark, but only a few were picked up up by the Dorsetshire, before the appearance of a German submarine, forced the ship to take off leaving apparently some hundreds in the sea. I think only three of those were recovered by the Submarine.
Sad story; apparently almost nothing was learned from the WW-I Battle of Jutland (by the Royal Navy anyway).