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.
###
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)
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Brian H says:
September 6, 2013 at 3:15 am
There was no claim that everything related to these eddies is analogous to blackholes. The abstract is a bit of a black hole to me – I’m not getting much understanding from:
The MIT Tech Review article is written for a less skilled-in-the-art audience and offers:
This part describes the event horizon and suggests that there is a ring that outside water and objects can escape, but inside cannot.
The article continues with talk about a singularity, but I assume that’s better described mathematically and not severely squished matter.
I find it interesting that some of the math for such disparate phenomenon applies to both, but you’re welcome to be unimpressed.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: @ur momisugly September 6, 2013 at 4:40 am
….My previous post has been “awaiting moderation” for over two hours…
….sometimes I really loath the implementing of the current moderation policy.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The two hours is not the problem for me. It is the fact the comment then gets stuck into the middle of the comment section so no one currently reading the comments ever sees it. With comments often running into the hundreds, I doubt there are many people who read through all the comments more than once.
Wow. A deeply dishonest paper. The comparison to black holes is completely inappropriate and incoherent. The physics of vorticity does not imply vortexes, although it can (here’s a real paper that describes this effect http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/ssherw/spectralhp/papers/CMBBE-DoShFrPe-02.pdf). They begin their effort by describing two-dimensional vortical flow. Don’t be fooled by the equations. Nowhere do they discuss sinks. They imply it, by bringing in the black hole analogy, but even that is to help describe the boundary of the vortex. Its superfluous, since the physics of this flow is defined by a closed loop. The only reason to bring in the black hole is to imply “sinks”.
I’m guessing that non of the authors are fluid dynamicists…
Here’s class notes from MIT’s open classroom, specifically having to do with ocean and atmospheric dynamics. Figures are dead for some reason, but the math as described is basically the same as this useless screed.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/earth-atmospheric-and-planetary-sciences/12-800-fluid-dynamics-of-the-atmosphere-and-ocean-fall-2004/lecture-notes/12800Lecture11.pdf
The rest of the class expands upon the above. Its a much better presentation of the issues, and expands to real applications. If you were drawing an analogy, there are much better ones – unless you are trying to imply something…
Nothing new under the Sun. The gulf stream demonstrates these all the time along the edges of the current. Warm and less warm water is not well mixed on the oceans’ surface. Which is why we get pools of warm water, that stay together as pools, transported to other locations both at and a bit below the water’s surface.
Which leads me to another pondering of mine which I will post under one of the ENSO threads.
There are hundreds of these eddies around the world’s oceans at any one time.
Whenever two oppositely flowing surface currents are riding up next to each other, the eddies will naturally develop over time and may last for weeks or months. They can also migrate through the ocean going up to maybe 1,000 kms before they dampen out. And the ocean is full of small oppositely flowing currents in many regions.
The now discontinued US navy model NLOM shows this clearly. One can zoom in to specific regions to see the eddies more clearly. Global, then the Agulhas, then the ENSO regions.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_nlom32/navo/WHOSP1_nlomw12930doper.gif
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_nlom32/navo/AGUSP1_nlomw12930doper.gif
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_nlom32/navo/EQSP1_nlomw12930doper.gif
Gail Combs says:
September 6, 2013 at 6:50 am
Perversely, readers who don’t have time or inclination to keep up with a thread are more likely to see those delayed comments. Oh well, there are plenty of comments I miss while scanning through the cornucopia.
I think it is stretching things a bit, (in the noble cause of sensationalism and selling news,) to show an illustration of a small whirlpool, and to imply it has some connection to oceanic features many kilometers across.
However I do feel the ocean has as much going on, at as many levels, as the atmosphere, though of course the atmosphere is less dense and things can happen more quickly. The ocean likely could be mapped at various levels, and demonstrate different features, just as we map the upper atmosphere at various levels, producing 200 mb maps and 500 mb maps and 800 mb maps. The ocean is liable to show us all sorts of features that effect other features at other levels, just as the atmosphere’s jet-stream effects how storms move and develop down below on the surface.
Don’t forget we knew next to nothing about the jet stream as recently as World War Two. Our knowledge of the atmosphere has grown by leaps and bounds. Our knowledge of the ocean is slower to grow, because it is more difficult to explore down than to explore up, because we can’t breathe water and the pressure can squish us, not all that far down.
People need to be a lot more humble, when talking about what we “know” about the sea. I constantly am getting a slap-down from reality, because I think I know things, and then discover Mother-Nature doesn’t like a know-it-all.
For example, I figured the Transpolar Drift was a pretty steady current across the Pole, but while watching the North Pole Camera the past few days the wind stopped. Briefly what was moving the ice was not wind, but the current below. And what did I see? The Transpolar Drift was going the wrong way. Oh well….back to the drawing board.
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-a-september-surprise/
Apropos black holes, according to Hawking “If information were lost in black holes, we wouldn’t be able to predict the future, because a black hole could emit any collection of particles. It could emit a working television set, or a leather bound volume of the complete works of Shakespeare…” [Or (shudder) Elvis Presley impersonators!]
See: http://www.hawking.org.uk/into-a-black-hole.html
Presumably these ocean vortices have a similar property; they emit Trenberth impersonators and malfunctioning AOGCMs.
Vortices possess angular momentum, a quantity more strictly preserved in physics than mass or energy. Whirlpools are the complement to upwellings. In both cases, the vertical motion of the water is driven by gravity using Archimedes’ Principle: the lower density fluid tends to rise, and the higher density fluid tends to fall. Since both salinity and temperature can affect the bulk density of sea water, careful in situ measurements of both must be made both inside and outside the vortices to determine the mix of factors contributing to the density variations.
In any case, the vertical motion combines with the angular motion to reduce the gradients of both temperature and salinity. This will prevent/limit/destroy local stratification.
In agreement with Levin Lohse, kuhnkat, Brian H
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.
Who wrote that nonsense? Chris Hall of Yahoo News.
Seems he is in London as a (no-nothing) Freelance Journalist.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/chris-hall/10/b93/3a3
Yahoo ought to issue a “We are sorry. It wont happen again” retraction.
As for the main paper:
We introduce a simple variational principle for coherent material vortices in “two-dimensional turbulence.”
“Well, THERE’s your Problem!”
We do not live in FLATLAND. Turbulence is phenomena in 3 spatial dimensions and one of time.
See those globs of light moving around?
Notice the way one of them is heading towards the bottom and suddenly whips around for no apparent reason?
That is a star, making a star follow a trajectory like that requires an object that masses millions of times as much as the sun does.
Now, you can’t see an object there, we don’t see it in any wavelengths we can examine it with, so what is your explanation for the star moving like that?
Black holes are a mathematical result which we deeply hoped was an error, one that we’ve tried to eliminate for literally decades now, and which persist despite the efforts of the greatest scientific minds over the last century… so no, it isn’t a perversion of mathematics.
The metaphor used is valid as well because there is an event horizon beyond which anything carried into a vortex will not be able to escape.
More interestingly, there is a phenomenon which resembles Hawking radiation, whereby whirlpools can transmit sound waves outwards despite the object causing the sound falling inwards, and mathematically it turns out you can use much the same sort of rules to describe it!
Jupiter…
Well, I have been wondering as to what happened, to all those singularities, escaping from the LHC chambers. How much time have we left. /sarc GK
As a former submariner, I can confidently say that knowledge of these has been around for decades. The only difference is that they weren’t given sensationalized names. We just called them cold core eddies or warm core eddies. Driving through these “black-holes” were non-events. You adjusted ballast and moved on.
Typical of “climate science communicators,” this article deceptively conflates different things, and either is unable (ie. too stupid) or unwilling (ie. too dishonest) to distinguish causes from effects. It talks about one thing (large ocean eddies), and then uses a deceptive photo of something completely different (a small tidal whirlpool) to compare ocean eddies to the vortex at the center of a black hole’s accretion disc. This silly beyond belief. The accretion disc and its central vortex are effects of a black hole. Ocean eddies are caused by the current flows themselves, encountering friction with other ocean currents, or water or land features. Large ocean eddies may spin, but they don’t look like tidal whirlpools.
Hummmm, this is from observations 7 years ago……..
I wonder where the deep water brine currents were at that time from Antarctic ice formation. It would also be interesting to understand how the massive phytoplankton blooms that typically take place off of that coastline may have played a role. Just trying to think beyond the normal natural understood parameters.
(messed up my blockquote)
RC Saumarez says: September 6, 2013 at 5:38 am “1 cubic Kilometer every 12 minutes does not seem to be a very large flux.” Coincidentally it is 10^12 Kg each 12 minutes.
a story about ‘black hole’ whirlpools?
Thought it would be about Hansen’s abilities, Mann’s integrity or the IPCC’s honesty.
Certainly, there is a broad pattern of strong hints & pointers, that pre-modern sailors etc often understood the sources & dynamics of various ocean current-effects, etc, a lot better than we are inclined to credit them, today. Back-when, and even waaay back.
The northeastern Atlantic currents, at large scales, were well-known in Antiquity, and the effects that arose when & after the moving ocean encountered obstacles (islands large & small, and coastlines), were well-appreciated – and exploited. Small-scale effects were of course more immediately evident.
The first people to cross the Atlantic, promptly figured out to sail north along the then “inconvenient” continent, on a “conveyor-belt” that would be totally obvious to a dunce landlubber sitting on a log, then ride it on east & back home.
… And do you think for a second that these “Karman vortex streets” peeling off the northern Gulf Stream were not noticed right away? And a priority made & technique developed, to avoid the damn things, and stay in the good current?
Sailors of old understood both surface-gyres, and up-welling/down-welling gyres.
Subtle differences of temperature create more-noticeable environmental side-effects which even casual amateur recreational modern fishermen will notice. There are clear fluctuations of temperatures within supposed homogenous waters, across small & large scales of area & time. Anybody who has spent time on the saltchuck knows this. Thermometers not required.
I am on the Pacific Northwest coast, and even as totally rank modern-economy people, we can tell – ‘directly’, and ‘sensibly’ – that an ocean current ‘blows ashore’ on us, and splits after hitting the shore, with water flow north along the coast, to our northern side, and south along our southern reaches. After their big tidal wave sent massive debris to our shores, it’s now a hot media-topic …. but we’ve been collecting Japanese stuff on the beaches, for generations …. centuries, and millenia.
People in our area will know to get ready for tuna in the Pacific Northwest, ahead of any official, formal or scientific clues. We say that the warm current that brings tuna, is “pulled” in … and there are precursors of the ‘pull-setup’ that are noticeable before data on the current-shift becomes available.
It’s often amusingly fatuous, and sometime weirdly disturbing, to see forms of understanding & knowledge that have existed among our cultural predecessors across large spans of time, suddenly trotted out as supposed “discoveries” made by the cultural glamor-pusses of today.
Here is footage of a Charybdis of my acquaintance. Whirlpools on this river in BC are known to swallow boats with insufficient power to get out of their grasp:
This article is Rraaaaaacist! The authors shouldn’t be talking about Black Women this way!
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=7475737
Mickey Reno @ur momisugly September 6, 2013 at 7:56 am , rightly complains:
“[This article] talks about one thing (large ocean eddies), and then uses a deceptive photo of something completely different (a small tidal whirlpool) to compare ocean eddies to the vortex at the center of a black hole’s accretion disc.”
The images used for this post, although “pretty”, are a come-down on the value of an otherwise decent effort to address an interesting topic.
Even though Anthony Watts has toned down the image-excesses of bygone days, on WUWT, the site still displays a pronounced case of “picture-itus”. I come to WUWT with images turned off in my browser, even though the sheer loading-problem is now abated, precisely due to the problem of nonsensical and ‘fluff’ imagery, so well illustrated in this post.
If we have decided that we “must” have images to illustrate our articles (and yes, I do understand this imperative), then at least park the piece or delay publication, until nominally-contributory imagery is in hand. What we see here today, with off-topic, misleading, confusing and even deceptive pictures, is outright “foolish”.