Climatologists and oceanographers have found evidence that abnormally rapid sea level rise in some regions of the Northwest Atlantic is associated with rising temperatures in deep waters entering the Atlantic from the Antarctic coast. This was reported by the press service of the University of Miami, UNN reports.
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The results of our observations emphasize that human activity affects even the most remote and inaccessible regions of the world's oceans. Anthropogenic factors have influenced the interaction between two areas of the Atlantic that are thousands of kilometers apart, and one of them is several kilometers deep
Belo and his colleagues came to this conclusion when analyzing data collected between 2000 and 2020 by deep-sea buoys installed on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in its tropical regions at a depth of several thousand meters. These systems track the movement of deep currents that are part of the so-called Atlantic Meridional Circulation.
This is how scientists refer to a huge closed system of currents that spans the entire Atlantic Ocean and plays a key role in the exchange of water between its surface and deeper layers. In recent years, oceanographers and climatologists have begun to fear that the slowdown of this "conveyor belt" of currents due to global warming will lead to radical changes in the transfer of heat and water in the oceans.
The analysis showed that the speed of the deep part of the Atlantic meridional circulation has slowed down by about 12% over the past two decades. This slowdown is due to the fact that the rapid increase in temperatures in the polar regions of the Earth prevents warm water from cooling off the Antarctic coast and sinking to the depths, from where these cold fluid flows move towards the equator and the North Atlantic.
The weakening of water transport at great depths has caused the deep waters of the Atlantic to warm by several thousand degrees Celsius, leading to an abnormally rapid rise in sea level off the eastern coasts of North America due to thermal expansion of the ocean. The further weakening of the cold Antarctic currents will further accelerate the warming of the deep Atlantic, making sea level rise off the coasts of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean even more visible to the eye.