Tropical Atlantic’s strongest current offsets climate change-induced low ocean oxygen levels

“The ocean’s circulating waters play an essential role in regulating climate: they store and transport oxygen, carbon, nutrients, heat and freshwater all around the world. In addition to the changes they undergo in response to natural climate variability, ocean currents have also been changing as a result of global warming. An EU-backed study has now used long-term data on the most energetic current in the tropical Atlantic, the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), to examine the relationship between equatorial current fluctuations and variations in the ocean’s oxygen content.”

Reference

  • Peter Brandt, Johannes Hahn, Sunke Schmidtko, Franz Philip Tuchen, Robert Kopte, Rainer Kiko, Bernard Bourlès, Rena Czeschel, Marcus Dengler. Atlantic Equatorial Undercurrent intensification counteracts warming-induced deoxygenationNature Geoscience, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00716-1