Ocean Currents Resolved on Regional Length Scales

he strong ocean current called the Gulf Stream conveys warm, dense, salty water from the Gulf of Mexico northeastward across the Atlantic Ocean.When the water reaches the North Atlantic, it cools, sinks, and begins flowing southwestward, moving all the way to the Southern Ocean, which it reaches centuries later.Those northerly and southerly currents, as well as others, make up the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).Without the AMOC, ice would block Northern Europe's ports in winter.It was therefore alarming when, in 1995, climate scientists predicted that climate change could shut down the AMOC entirely by 2200 [1].Now Gerrit Lohmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and his collaborators have added new details to what that shutdown might look like [2].Their high-resolution simulations indicate that while on a planetary scale the AMOC Snapshots of ocean current speed in the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean to the Arctic as predicted with low-resolution (left) and high-resolution (right) simulations.