More settled science: these whirlpools transport vast amount of water and heat vertically in the ocean, somewhat like hurricanes do for the atmosphere. It is fun to imagine “Trenberth’s missing heat” being sucked down one of these.
Via Yahoo News:
Satellites have shown two mysterious ‘black hole’ whirlpools in the South Atlantic ocean – ultra powerful “vortexes” which suck water down into the depths.
Two of the black holes – or “maelstroms” – have been sighted in three months by physicists from Zurich and Miami who have written a new paper using satellite altimetry to look for and identify these oceanic vortices. They write in their paper:
The South Atlantic ocean region in question is bounded by longitudes [14W, 9E] and latitudes [39S, 21S]. Using satellite altimetry data, we seek coherent Lagrangian vortices (black-hole eddies, for short) over a 90-day time period, ranging from 24 November 2006 to 22 February 2007.
The powerful vortices of current have been described as ‘maelstroms’ and are ‘mathematical analogues’ for black holes – which is to say they do exactly the same with water that black holes do with light. The discovery could give new insights into how oceanic currents transport debris and may even have implications for climate change studies.
The maelstroms are detected by their rotating edges, which the scientists found were reliable indicators of the vortex within, based on pioneering research carried out by Stephen Hawking on black holes:
‘Intuitively, one expects that any…vortex in the fluid must contain such a singularity in its interior, just as all black holes are expected to contain Penrose-Hawking singularities. This expectation turns out to be correct’.
The singularities, as they have been termed, last for months at a time, moving across the ocean without interference from other currents. Thus they can transport water of different temperatures and salinity to other areas of the ocean, potentially influencing the regional climate.
Haller and Beron-Vera found that the vortices transported water in a north-western direction 30% faster than had previously been reckoned – at a rate equating to 1.3 million cubic meters of water per second.
In addition, the maelstroms were found to occur four times deeper in the ocean than previously estimated; the study found examples as deep as 2000 meters below the surface.
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Here is the draft paper, final publication in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
Coherent Lagrangian vortices: The black holes of turbulence
G. Hallery and F. J. Beron-Vera (Received 13 May 2013; revised 18 July 2013; accepted 23 July 2013.)
We introduce a simple variational principle for coherent material vortices in two-dimensional turbulence. Vortex boundaries are sought as closed stationary curves of the averaged Lagrangian strain. Solutions to this problem turn out to be mathematically equivalent to photon spheres around black holes in cosmology. The uidic photon spheres satisfy explicit di erential equations whose outermost limit cycles are optimal Lagrangian vortex boundaries. As an application, we uncover super-coherent material eddies in the SouthAtlantic, which yield speci c Lagrangian transport estimates for Agulhas rings.
In this NASA visualization video (not part of the paper, but related) one can see quasi-permanent eddies throughout the south Atlantic.
Data sources: sea surface height from NASA’s Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1, and Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite altimeters; gravity from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission; surface wind stress from NASA’s QuikScat mission; sea surface temperature from the NASA/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS; sea ice concentration and velocity from passive microwave radiometers; temperature and salinity profiles from shipborne casts, moorings and the international Argo ocean observation system.
Related articles
- Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic Ocean (technologyreview.com)
The whirlpools demonstrate what in hydraulics is called laminar flow and turbulent flow where the once smooth flowing (laminar) water encounters a restriction resulting in an increase in velocity which causes areas of turbulent flow.
People are getting carried away with criticizing the analogy. An analogy is just — an analogy. It doesn’t prove anything, as it is just utilized for comprehension purposes.
This study needs to provide evidence that waters of a higher temperature are transported to greater depths by the processes cited.
There is something very ‘wrong’ about this article methinks. The ‘news’ report over sensationalises a rather fact deficient idea, the paper cited, as little as I’ve read, is highly technical language, and the ocean studies would have surely produced some real data and science and pics or videos by 2013? I’m not suggesting a type of ocean whirlypool doesn’t exist, but come on, to grab attention by talking about black holes, hawking, etc –
It is not April 1st, but something seems amiss here that disinclines me to explore further. Life is too short …
Ric Werme says:
September 5, 2013 at 10:32 pm
“…nice photo of a whirlpool in their version of this story. Only problem is that I think it’s way too small to be one of this whirlpools.”
I’ve seen these in Jarvis Inlet (a fjord), British Colulmbia when the tide is going out or in. They are scary and can be swinging a large log around. I’ve steered around them in a fast inboard boat. If you hit the edges of one you get a good (temporary) pull off course. They were referred to locally as ‘skookumchuck’ meaning strong waters (also used for rapids etc.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skookumchuck
I find it hard to believe that sailors weren’t already aware of these. Modern science is a jealous, sneaky potage. In the Svensmark GCR thread of the other day, my comment around #100+ was the first to mention the Wilson Cloud Chamber whilch demonstrated GCR paths as streaks of clouds in the chamber in 1912. Perhaps, Svensmark did reference Wilson, I didn’t check.
Here is Charles T.R. Wilson’s Nobel Lecture. This guy had done Svensmarks experiments and much more, beautifully, starting in 1895. This is a must read for anyone interested in the beauty of the scientific method (and the beauty of apparati).
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1927/wilson-lecture.pdf
Please be careful of dismissing the explanatory value of cosmological black-holes for not understanding their hypothetical transport mechanisms. Some advocates of new-physics cosmology fret about entropy transport just as we fret about heat transport. Read Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics is also broadly concerned with the role of controversy and the value of diverse approaches in the ethics and process of science (not to give any credence to unfalsifiable warmism).
Black holes in the ocean…. What rubbish.
Huge logs floating in the Kings River, in Kings Canyon NP, collect in eddies. As a youth I would ride the logs around and around, having to be attentive only at the cusp of another circuit or transport into the white water.
I seem to remember Svensmark mentioned in one of his vid/documentaries that he was inspired by the memory of experiments with cloud chambers when a youth (don’t they all show sporadic GCR as well as radiation when you bring a source close, as part of the demonstration/experiment?)
*sigh*
My previous post has been “awaiting moderation” for over two hours, originally submitted at 2:31AM site time.
I like the current moderation policy, having most comments slide right through is an improvement.
But when comments that will eventually be approved get hung up for a technical reason, and the moderation staff isn’t checking the “moderation” bucket for hours on end, despite my not being much of a complainer, sometimes I really loath the implementing of the current moderation policy.
*groan*
So what is new here that wasn’t covered in my undergrduate course on fluid mechanics 40 years ago? The analogy with black holes is a bit dodgy. I can see how the plug hole type vortex has similarities because the plug hole is a water sink that enables energy to be put into the system from gravitational potential energy as water flows into the plug hole and a black hole has a gravitational sink for matter/light that falls into it. But a vortex without such a sink is clearly different although derived from the same fluid mechanical equations.
But without a sink the water simply rotates and water heat won’t be transported downwards.
While the tops of them seem to be well documented, I have not really read much on the rest of these maelstroms. I guess they are not permanent enough to get some equipment down to study them. But they are fascinating!
Rush – The Fountain of Lamneth – circa 1975 – The maelstrom is near is one of my favourite all time lyric lines.
Sea spray blurs my vision
Waves roll by so fast
Save my ship of freedom
I’m lashed helpless to the mast
Remembering when first I held
The wheel in my own hands
I took the helm so eagerly
And sailed for distant lands
But now the sea’s too heavy
And I just, I just don’t understand
Why must my crew desert me?
When I need, I need a guiding hand
Call out for direction and there’s no one there to steer
Shout out for salvation but there’s no one there to hear
Cry out supplication for the maelstrom is near
Scream out desperation but no one cares to hear
johnmarshall says:
September 6, 2013 at 3:12 am
…..
Eddy currents are a friction condition whilst black holes are a gravity condition……
So as a ‘friction condition’ they are really Rossby waves in a closed loop ?
Many people have said for a long time that there is no such thing a gravity, and this seems to prove the point that in fact the Earth sicks
….Earth sucks.
1 cubic Kilometer every 12 minutes does not seem to be a very large flux.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
September 5, 2013 at 11:42 pm
I’m no astrophysicist but it is nothing like a Black Hole!
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darn. here I was hoping to harness the vortex in my bathtub to build a time machine. I already done the calculations. the vortex time machine should be able to transport me a full hour into the future in only 3.6×10^12 nanoseconds.
” The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
September 5, 2013 at 11:42 pm
I’m no astrophysicist but it is nothing like a Black Hole! A Black Hole has a gravity field so intense that light cannot escape – it’s not that it sucks light in (as such) as far as I understand it. A photon is a massless particle. It’s path can be bent by gravity, but as far as I am aware it won’t be ‘sucked in’. Would any physicist on here care to chime in?”
Light CAN be sucked in. As you said, nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light. I suppose the same as happens in a black hole will happen with these vortices. The “missing heat” will dissapear forever, never again to be detected.
the historical basis for black holes can be found on ancient maps depicting whirlpools and other monsters of the sea just beyond the horizon. Same science really that we use today in some fields.
Then why limit it to science, its used in politics and beliefs too.
All those rubbishing this paper on the basis that “if they were there we would have seen them” might try to remember just how BIG the world’s oceans are.
Even if the “eye” of a vortex like this was a mile across, the chance of a ship just happening to spot it would be slim. Consider how difficult search and rescue operations are! Granted, they’re generally looking for something much smaller than this but they usually have at least an approximate location to start, often have beacons to guide them, and (perhaps most importantly) they’re actively looking for what they’re looking for. I doubt (though stand to be corrected) that many officers on watch on oil tankers are constantly scanning the seas looking for giant whirlpools!
There have been plenty of sailors tales of this sort of thing, which are generally dismissed as exaggeration. besides, those that have got close enough to confirm with measurements etc could well be amongst the many ships that never made it back to port to tell the story.
This is depressingly predictable “dial-a-result” by the team, probably ordered by Trenberth. It has all the ingredients needed to account for the missing heat especially the 2000m magic number. Its utter rubbish but who cares?
Jon says:
September 6, 2013 at 12:12 am
“Ric Werme says”
> Your video looks like Saltstraumen in Northern Norway?
Could be, I posted it around 2 AM. I was trying to get the one that inspired Poe and could well have missed.
The Wikipedia Maelstrom page (see link above) has a description of several of the most famous, but not much in terms of scary pictures.
Julian in Wales says:
September 6, 2013 at 2:29 am
I see that these ocean phenomena remind some people of Trenberth’s “missing heat.” Trenberth’s account requires that there are some “mechanisms” of ocean mixing that transport heat from upper levels to the depths of 2000 feet or more. Why is that? There is no plausible story that gets one from a 1C increase in surface heat over a century to increased heat in the deep oceans. Like these maelstroms, Trenberth’s “mechanisms” are properties of the ocean and have been there always. This fact causes a huge problem for radiation-only theorists.
If there are “mechanisms” in the ocean that transport heat to the deep oceans and those “mechanisms” are not explained by radiation theory then they must be explored through empirical investigation of the oceans. If Trenberth is correct and heat is transferred to the deep oceans, then another question for empirical exploration is how long the heat stays there. Can it stay there one year or hundreds of years. As long as the answer is not zero periods of time, radiation-only theory has been violated.
If the oceans can sequester heat that was produced by radiation from the sun or back-radiation from GHGs then it can reduce the amount of heat in the atmosphere. Yet this reduction is not explained by radiation theory but by a separate sub-theory about the oceans. Finally, we have an arena of empirical investigation that is separate from radiation theory that can serve as a real world bound on climate models. In layman’s terms, Trenberth’s position that the heat is hiding in the deep oceans makes him a revolutionary among mainstream climate scientists.
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But does make for a good headline. Remember Al Gore’s Ozone “Hole”? There never was hole just a thinning of the ozone layer.
What a bunch of crap they aren’t black holes and not new eddies have been around and understood for quite some time. The Navy has a regular update of fronts and eddies. Eddies are made by fronts. A front meanders and turns back on itself and a piece breaks off and wanders off on it own. It picks up the spin from the front it broke off from. Cold Eddies sink Warm eddies rise. They both eventually peter out. Nothing new here. Just more Junk Science and just WOW!
Maybe I’m simple, but, why is find huge eddies news? Would it not be expected that eddies would occur on basin scales as currents move on basin scales? As mentioned in a previous comment, we see eddies in our bath tubs, in our swimming pools, in the rivers, bays, and everywhere there is a bathymetric feature that slows water on one side of a current. Why are these guys surprised to find huge eddies on a huge scale? I would have been astonished if the paper said the eddies were proven NOT to exist. I’m not astonished to hear that the have found what should be fully expected.