Major wind-driven ocean currents shifting toward the poles - AGU Newsroom

Major wind-driven ocean currents shifting toward the poles - AGU Newsroom: WASHINGTON— Over the past 40 years, the major wind-driven current systems in the ocean have steadily shifted toward the poles, according to new research published in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. Eight massive wind-driven ocean currents, called ocean gyres, move water around our planet. There are three in the Atlantic Ocean, three in the Pacific Ocean, and one each in the Indian and Antarctic oceans. These rotating current systems largely determine the weather and marine productivity in our planet’s coastal regions. In the new study, experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), analyzed long-term global satellite data of ocean surface temperature and sea levels. Both datasets offer insights into the evolution of large-scale surface currents, and indicate that, in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere alike, the borders of the ocean gyres and their boundary currents are moving closer to the poles, at a rate of more than 800 meters (2,600 feet) per year. This displacement of tremendous water masses is chiefly driven by global warming, as calculations using a new climate model confirm. According to the researchers, the con