Subsurface oceanmixing near the equator significantly affects climate understanding and predictability NaturePortfolio
Oceans are fundamental to scientists' understanding of. On a basic level, ocean waters absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide and heat from the atmosphere. But the mixing of ocean water—the change in properties including salinity, nutrients, gas and temperature that results from the mechanical force generated by winds, tides, cooling and warming—affects carbon and heat uptake as well as the large-scale ocean climate.
, but their results indicated that these pathways are limited to the ocean's surface or topographic boundaries," said Chen, who was a doctoral student under Dewar's advisement when the study began in 2018."Our study provides the first observational evidence and numerical validation of the existence of key mixing pathways far from the surface and boundaries."
The type of mixing seen in this study had been previously observed near the Kuroshio, a strong ocean current offshore from Japan that strongly impacts Asia's climate.