A warm hello to the blogging world! I shall keep my first post short and sweet. As you may have noticed this blog is entitled The Ocean Engine, a metaphor used to describe the potential of ocean circulation to affect climate, past, present and future. I have attached a short video from NASA’s earth science week, discussing the role of salt in the Earth’s ocean. The video mentions a meridonal overturning circulation, a feature that will be explored in this blog. Remember, the extreme doomsday scenario in The Day after Tommorow? Well that was hollywood's way of exaggerating the speed and response time of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (mentioned as overturning in the video), which as the name suggests, has a density dependent on changes in temperature and salt content. A key take home point from this video is that in relation to other forcing factors in the climate system, the oceans have a slower response time (about 1000 years as stated in this video) making prediction of changes in ocean circulation difficult.
Whilst the impact of climate change can also be seen through oceanic acidification and on potential geo-engineering strategies to potentially combat climate change, these are not dealt with in this blog. This blog will explore news coverage, science magazines and academic literature in order to generate further insight into what can be described as a key tipping point in the climate system. How has the pattern in ocean circulation changed in the past? If so, what are the mechanisms surrounding abrupt changes in ocean circulation in the climate system?
I would like to leave you with the following thought to ponder, The Ocean Engine, an unknown “tipping point” in the climate system, or merely another internal forcing factor in the Earth’s Climate system?
Very effective, interesting first post - i look forward to reading how this develops.
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