State of the Science Fact Sheet: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

Sabatello, Rayne

doi:10.25923/pav0-be22

i

State of the Science Fact Sheet: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

2024
By Sabatello, Rayne

Details

Alternative Title:

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)
Personal Author:

Sabatello, Rayne
Corporate Authors:

United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; CSL (Chemical Sciences Laboratory) ; PSL (Physical Sciences Laboratory)
Description:

The AMOC is the Atlantic Ocean component of the global Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is sometimes also referred to as the global ocean conveyor belt (Fig. 1). The AMOC carries relatively warm and salty upper ocean waters to the highlatitude North Atlantic and then to the Arctic, releasing heat into the atmosphere over the high-latitudes. As such, the warm and salty water cools along its path northward becoming denser, and sinking to form cooler deep water in the high-latitude North Atlantic. The newly formed deep water then moves southward and is slowly (over hundreds to thousands of years) transformed into upper ocean waters through mixing and upwelling in the Indo-Pacific and Southern Ocean. The AMOC transports heat, salt, carbon, nutrients, and other properties across the basin, meaning that variations in the AMOC’s strength (commonly measured by the volume of upper ocean water transported northward in unit time) impacts sea level, marine ecosystems, shift temperature and precipitation patterns, and extreme weather. Thus, changes in the AMOC can significantly impact society.
Keywords:

Marine Ecosystem Ocean Sea Level Marine Ecosystem NOAA Science Council
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25923/pav0-be22
Format:

pdf
Document Type:

Miscellaneous
Place as Subject:

Atlantic Ocean
License:

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Rights Information:

CC0 Public Domain
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:f55f4e8df2715ed8a18cf4961147bf185af6625bd22ad76bd200079352bc52d660d233ce087c94922a433bfb9f8b53b02109fec4978fa209f075396aa5934061
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/70414/noaa_70414_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 510.80 KB ]

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