We had a terrific set of climate and local weather questions, break up between two panels on the MPR sales space on the Minnesota State Honest this week. One actually had me stumped, as a neighborhood listener requested concerning the relationship between El Niño and the weakening AMOC present that runs the size of the Atlantic Ocean. What’s the AMOC, in any case? Right here’s what the Nationwide Ocean Service part of NOAA says:
“AMOC stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The AMOC circulates water from north to south and again in a protracted cycle throughout the Atlantic Ocean. This circulation brings heat to varied elements of the globe and likewise carries vitamins essential to maintain ocean life.”
AMOC strikes the equal of 6,800 Olympic sized swimming swimming pools of seawater each second! The Brits present a useful set of continuously requested questions on AMOC, as properly, from their Nationwide Oceanography Centre.
Right here’s one: is the Gulf Stream the identical as AMOC? Nicely, type of, as they write “It’s common to confuse the Gulf Stream with the AMOC. Whereas the Gulf Stream is a vital a part of the AMOC system, they aren’t equivalent.
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This can be a deeper dive into the AMOC present, from Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment.
WHOI
The Gulf Stream is a floor present partly pushed by the wind. Consider the AMOC as a protracted journey and the Gulf Stream as a motorway for only one a part of that journey. It carries heat water from the South Atlantic to the far north. When this “motorway” ends, the nice and cozy water takes totally different “A roads’ to proceed its journey northward.”
As meteorologists, it looks like most questions we’re getting are about El Niño and its impression on the approaching winter. However, in line with a 2021 research with scientists on the College of Arizona and Princeton/NOAA, AMOC might finally play a big function in forcing actually chilly air over the Higher Midwest and different elements of North America.
In the meantime, we’ve had some neat El Niño updates over the previous couple of hours. Most not too long ago, NOAA introduced that they’re sending 4 autonomous Saildrone models into the guts of the El Niño circulation, steering from Hawaii to the equatorial Pacific.
These unmanned boats seem like a mix of a sailboat and a submarine. The staff of 4 models will scrub the waters for temperature adjustments each minute.
NOAA is dispatching 4 Saildrones from Hawaii to check the central Pacific and ENSO.
NOAA Analysis
The United Nations simply launched a stern warning about El Niño depth, calling the strengthening sample one thing like we’ve “never before” seen. Mandy Thalhuber has an awesome write-up of what which means for Minnesota in this Updraft report.
Tying this collectively, and returning to our listener’s query that impressed this particular Updraft version, how might AMOC and El Niño tie collectively? In full transparency of the evolving science for these ocean currents hundreds of miles away from Minnesota, we nonetheless actually don’t perceive how the shifting circulations will rework our seasons.
However in the event you made it this far, maybe you realize of some new analysis that’s connecting all of the dots.
