Brine pools—hypersaline, low-oxygen waters deadly to many forms of ocean life—can experience waves hundreds of meters high when hit by a landslide, potentially overspilling their deep-sea basins.
ocean circulation
Posted inScience Updates
Climate Change and Sea Level Rise in the Mediterranean
1st National Workshop on Climate Change and Sea Level Rise in the Mediterranean; Rome, Italy, 5–6 July 2018
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Do Turbidity Currents Accelerate?
Flume experiments show that a self-reinforcing cycle can strengthen the currents responsible for transporting large amounts of sediment to the deep oceans.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Radionuclide Data from GEOTRACES Improve Particle Flux Estimates
New measurements of multiple radionuclides in the Atlantic Ocean offer a robust constraint on the sinking flux of particles and associated vertical fluxes of biogeochemically important elements.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A Comprehensive Estimate on the Entropy Budget in the Ocean
An analysis of the energy budget in the ocean estimates the Carnot work to be 110 terawatts and the ocean’s Carnot efficiency to be 0.86%.
Posted inScience Updates
Deep Floats Reveal Complex Ocean Circulation Patterns
Acoustically tracked floats drift far below the ocean’s surface, providing fresh discoveries about deep-sea currents. A new archive gathers decades’ worth of float data into a central repository.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Dispersal of River Water by Ocean Eddies and Shallow Ekman Flow
Low-salinity water from the Ganga-Brahmaputra river is transported by mesoscale eddies in the Bay of Bengal, but when the monsoon winds strengthen, a shallow “Ekman” flow dominates dispersal of water.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Coastal Ocean Warming Adds to CO2 Burden
With coastal oceans around the world changing from the effects of urbanization, rising carbon dioxide levels, and climate warming, recent work begins to find new land-sea linkages.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A Complete Picture of Southern Ocean Surface Circulation
For the first time, researchers combine estimates of sea surface height and circulation patterns in both ice-covered and ice-free regions of the Southern Ocean.
Posted inScience Updates
Ocean Circulation, Carbon Cycling During the Last Deglaciation
Past Global Changes (PAGES) OC3 Working Group second workshop on Ocean Circulation and Carbon Cycling during Last Deglaciation: Regional Synthesis of Carbon Isotopes Data; Corvallis, Oregon, 27–29 June 2017