Major study into how oceans ‘breathe’ launched by UK scientists

A £2.5 million project to transform our understanding of how the ocean breathes by storing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is now underway with the aim of providing our most in-depth understanding of ocean mixing to date. Led by the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the project intends to deliver detail to such “unprecedented detail” that it will mark the dawn of a new era for ocean-focused climate prediction models. Called REMIX-TUNE, the project has been awarded £2.5 million from the European Research Council to deploy a cutting-edge fleet of sensors on board high-tech floats across the ocean, through which they will receive a new level of detailed data on how the ocean breathes. It’s through a vital process known as mixing – the tiny turbulent movements that pull water, heat, and chemicals from its surface down into the deep – that the ocean ‘breathes’. And it’s this ventilation that helps to regulate the Earth’s climate, buffering against the impacts of human-induced climate change. Mixing also plays a key role in regulating ocean current systems, such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which has been the recent focus of much concern among the scientific community for running perilously close collapse , if not already heading – with no degree of uncertainty – towards it. “Small-scale mixing plays a crucial role in how the ocean exchanges carbon and heat with the atmosphere and stores it below the surface,” said Dr Bieito Fernandez Castro, a lecturer in physical oceanography at the University of Southampton, leading the project. “Yet, much about this crucial process remains a mystery, so there’s a higher degree of uncertainty in our estimates that we’d like. It happens on such small scales (ranging from centimetres to kilometres) that it has been hard to […]

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