Marine scientists in Scotland have helped to develop the most comprehensive view yet of how large-scale north Atlantic currents that dictate our climate may be changing.The scientists at the Scottish Association for
Marine scientists in Scotland have helped to develop the most comprehensive view yet of how large-scale north Atlantic currents that dictate our climate may be changing.
The scientists at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban, a partner of UHI, have combined data from a range of sources to measure the mass formation of Atlantic currents, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Their Scotland-Canada Overturning Array (SCOTIA) of observations incorporates data from scientific moorings on the existing sub-polar OSNAP array and the 50-year Extended Ellett Line time series, as well as Argo floats drifting in the Atlantic. Data from the new array, which stretches from Scotland to Canada, also pre-dates OSNAP (established in 2014) by 10 years, giving observations from 2004-2024.
The findings have been published in a new paper in the journal Ocean Science.
Oceanographers across the world have long hypothesized that the AMOC could be weakening because of climate change, a view partly supported by a sub-tropical array of moorings known as RAPID, which has been in place since 2004. Because AMOC transports heat northwards from the tropics, a weakening, or complete collapse, of this ocean system could potentially plunge western Europe into freezing temperatures
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