How Ocean Currents Affect Global Climate

How Ocean Currents Affect Global Climate

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Florida State University oceanographer Kevin Speer has a “new paradigm” for describing how the world’s oceans circulate — and with it he may help reshape science’s understanding of the processes by which wind, water, sunlight and other factors interact and influence the planet’s climate.

Working with John Marshall, an oceanography professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Speer reviewed — or essentially synthesized — vast amounts of previous data on ocean circulation (including their own earlier papers). As a result, they have created what Speer calls a new paradigm in the study of ocean currents on a global scale. Their work is publshed in the journal Nature Geoscience.