Scientists are quite alarmed indeed about the Earth's strongest ocean current. Apparently, it is slowing down and poses to have devastating consequences. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) has transported more than 173 million cubic meters of water before you even finish reading this sentence.
It forms a ring around the Antarctic continent. However, the ocean current will apparently slow by 20 percent by 2050. Scientists are putting the blame on climate change, pointing to global temperatures and rising sea levels. The ocean current is important for pushing heat as well as nutrients across the seas.
Lead researcher Dr Bishakhdatta Gayen, associate professor at the University of Melbourne, told Daily Mail, "The ocean is extremely complex and finely balanced. If this current "engine" breaks down, there could be severe consequences, including more climate variability, with greater extremes in certain regions, and accelerated global warming due to a reduction in the ocean's capacity to act as a carbon sink."
Alarm Bells Over Strongest Ocean Current
The current is an important driver for bringing nutrients to the ocean's surface. Melting ice sheets is affecting the saltiness of the ocean current.
Gayen said, "The melting ice sheets dump vast quantities of fresh water into the salty ocean. This sudden change in ocean "salinity" has a series of consequences - including the weakening of the sinking of surface ocean water to the deep, called the Antarctic Bottom Water, and, based on this study, a weakening of the strong ocean jet that surrounds Antarctica."
Gayen and his teams believe that the simulations show that the melting ice would slow down the ocean current by 20 percent.
Co-author Dr Taimoor Sohail, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne, said, "One way that the ACC is important in regulating our climate is that it controls how much heat gets onto Antarctica and onto the Antarctic Ice Shelf. So, a slowdown in the ACC could allow more heat to transfer south from the warmer North, and that would enable ice melting to accelerate."
Researchers will continue to monitor the situation and chart what the effects could be.
