{"id":160955,"date":"2020-07-29T22:57:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T02:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/?p=160955"},"modified":"2020-07-29T22:58:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T02:58:23","slug":"new-ocean-current-in-deep-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/news\/new-ocean-current-in-deep-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"New current that transports water to one of world\u2019s largest \u2018waterfalls\u2019 discovered in deep ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

URI professor emeritus part of research team<\/h2>\n

July 29, 2020<\/h5>\n

An international team discovered a previously unrecognized ocean current that transports water to one of the world\u2019s largest \u201cwaterfalls\u201d in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Bank Channel Overflow into the deep North Atlantic. While investigating the pathways that water takes to feed this major waterfall, the research team identified a surprising path of the cold and dense water flowing at depth, which led to the discovery of this new ocean current.<\/p>\n

“This new ocean current and the path it takes toward the Faroe Bank Channel are exciting findings,\u201d said L\u00e9on Chafik, the lead author of the paper published in <\/a>Nature Communications<\/em><\/a> and a research scientist at Stockholm University<\/a>, Sweden.<\/p>\n

“The two discoveries reported here, in one of the best studied areas of the world ocean, is a stark reminder that we still have much to learn about the Nordic Seas,\u201d said co-author Thomas Rossby<\/a>, emeritus professor at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography. \u201cThis is crucial given the absolutely fundamental role they play in the major glacial-interglacial climate swings.”<\/p>\n

Previous studies dealing with this deep flow have long assumed that these cold waters, which flow along the northern slope of the Faroes, turn directly into the Faroe-Shetland Channel (the region the water flows through before reaching the Faroe Bank Channel). Instead, Chafik and the paper\u2019s co-authors show that there exists another path into the Faroe-Shetland Channel. They show that water can take a longer path all the way to the continental margin outside Norway before turning south heading toward this major waterfall. \u201cRevealing this newly identified path from available observations was not a straightforward process and took us a good deal of time to piece together\u201d said Chafik.<\/p>\n

The researchers also found this new path depends on prevailing wind conditions. \u201cIt seems that the atmospheric circulation plays a major role in orchestrating the identified flow regimes,\u201d added Chafik.<\/p>\n

The study further reveals that much of the water that will end up in the Faroe Bank Channel is not in fact transported along the western side of the Faroe-Shetland Channel (the region the water flows through before reaching the Faroe Bank Channel), as previously thought. Instead, most of this water comes from the eastern side of the Faroe-Shetland Channel where it is transported by a jet-like and deep-reaching ocean current. \u201cThis was a curious but very exciting finding, especially since we are aware that a very similar flow structure exists in the Denmark Strait. We are pleased that we were able to identify this new ocean current both in observations and a high-resolution ocean general circulation model,\u201d said Chafik.<\/p>\n

“Because this newly discovered flow path and ocean current play an important part in the ocean circulation at higher latitudes, its discovery adds to our limited understanding of the overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean,\u201d said Chafik. \u201cThis discovery would not have been possible without many institutional efforts over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An international team discovered a previously unrecognized ocean current that transports water to one of the world\u2019s largest \u201cwaterfalls\u201d in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Bank Channel Overflow into the deep North Atlantic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2165,"featured_media":160961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[861,316],"class_list":["post-160955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-h-thomas-rossby","tag-physical-oceanography"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160967,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160955\/revisions\/160967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}