AMOC The River Within the Ocean

Far from being a homogenous entity the Atlantic ocean is a transporter of heat and salinity which is stratified in all three axes.

Table of contents

Visual representation of the heat flow within the Atlantic

The following image illustrates the flows in two dimensions

How the heat flow impacts geographically

Heat flow, driven by the halocline and thermocline differentials within the seemingly homogeneous Atlantic ocean drives temperatures and thus climate.

Table of of cities at similar latitudes

So lets start with a table of UK cities on approximately the same latitude with some basic climate data.

Admittedly the effects are more complicated than just AMOC given that climate is a highly dynamic and chaotic system and the weather for the given examples is affected by combination of the gulf stream of which AMOC is just a part and the jet stream. Nonetheless it is an important driver of northern european climate.

The Cycle

So AMOC in simple terms: Running from the arctic near Greenland all the way down through the Indian and Pacific oceans where it picks up heat and transfers it back up past Africa and Europe thus returning to Greenland.

Haloclyne a major factor

The driving this is the thermocline / halocline. Put simply cold fresh water is denser than warm salty water drops to the bottom of the ocean and runs south like a river within the sea picking up nutrients as it goes which in turn supports fisheries in the southern oceans. As it picks up salts mixes and warms it is pushed back towards the north. A global circulation of heat and nutrients driven by the release of cold pure water of the ice in the far north - however too much will disrupt this delicate flow and then?