Welcome to the AOB: Atlantic Ocean Blog!

Disclaimer
The AOB is written, edited and moderated by Ingo Richter (Senior Scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, JAMSTEC), Eleanor Frajka-Williams (a professor at the Universität Hamburg, Institute of Oceanography) and Regina Rodrigues (a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina) with guest posts from the CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel and others. Ideas and explanations should be attributed to the author of the post, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WCRP or CLIVAR. 

Tags

Climate Change
AZM
Equatorial Atlantic
Atlantic Niños
AMOC
Climate
Atlantic

CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel

Atlantic Niños aren’t what they used to be

Submitted by Jing Li on Wed, 2023-04-19 10:41

The Atlantic Niño is a climate variability pattern that was discovered in the 1970s and has been likened to El Niño. Just as we thought we had made good progress in understanding this phenomenon, it seems like it might go “extinct”, potentially due to climate change. Is the Atlantic Niño really going the way of the dodo, or is it merely taking a rest?

The great ocean conveyor - what has it been doing lately?

Submitted by Jing Li on Tue, 2023-02-07 11:27

The great ocean conveyor belt is a colloquial term that is used to refer to the loosely organised band of currents that circulate around the world’s oceans.  In the Atlantic sector, we’ve taken to calling this the ‘Atlantic meridional overturning circulation’ (aka AMOC) where near surface waters (top 1km) move northwards and deep currents (between 1km and 4km depth) move southwards.  What is this system of currents?  What has it been doing lately?  Read on to find out more…