Welcome to the AOB: Atlantic Ocean Blog!

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The AOB is written, edited and moderated by Ingo Richter (Senior Scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, JAMSTEC), Eleanor Frajka-Williams (a professor at the Universität Hamburg, Institute of Oceanography) and Regina Rodrigues (a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina) with guest posts from the CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel and others. Ideas and explanations should be attributed to the author of the post, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WCRP or CLIVAR. 

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CLIVAR Atlantic Region Panel

The great ocean conveyor - what has it been doing lately?

Submitted by Jing Li on Tue, 2023-02-07 11:27

The great ocean conveyor belt is a colloquial term that is used to refer to the loosely organised band of currents that circulate around the world’s oceans.  In the Atlantic sector, we’ve taken to calling this the ‘Atlantic meridional overturning circulation’ (aka AMOC) where near surface waters (top 1km) move northwards and deep currents (between 1km and 4km depth) move southwards.  What is this system of currents?  What has it been doing lately?  Read on to find out more…