ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation transports warm tropical surface water towards northern Europe and returns cold water at depth to the world’s ocean. At the same time it plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle through the ocean’s ability to dissolve carbon dioxide. This overturning is thus of great climatic importance, but a complete picture of its driving forces has not yet emerged due to several observational and theoretical challenges. Using realistic coarse and high resolution ocean models, scientists investigated the ocean response to changes in wind stress and the ability of meso-scale eddy parameterisations to simulate that response.