Fickle ocean current foils climate modellers
The North Atlantic is stirring fitfully. A new monitoring system has shown that the ocean's currents change rapidly, surging or slowing from one week to the next. That makes it difficult to judge whether they really are slowing down over the long term, as one study has suggested.
An overall slowdown might be bad news for Europe, which is warmed by a current called the North Atlantic Drift, and it might be even worse for the rest of the world because the North Atlantic forms a vital piece of planetary plumbing. When the North Atlantic Drift reaches the Arctic, it cools, sinks and flows back to the south, helping to drive global ocean circulation.