Atlantic Ocean Currents and Climate Change

As we have seen in these past few years and specially past few months, temperatures have been rising and are now in an all record high.  For the month of October 2015, The city of downtown Los Angeles reported an average temperature of 75.6 degrees which broke the previous record of 71.6 degrees set in 1983.  The city of San Diego reported an average temperature of around 73 degrees which was 7 degrees higher from the previous record, and South Africa reported on the October 27, 2015 the highest recorded temperature in human history of 119 degrees. Now a group of NASA and university scientist are planning to measure how currents in the Atlantic Ocean change over time, to see how these changes affect climate change.  The current carries warm water north and as the water travels north it cools down and becomes denser, which makes it sink deeper into the ocean.  At this point the current carries the colder water back down south and as it travels south it distributes nutrients and heat into the ocean.  So this current is responsible of distributing heat and energy through out the Atlantic cooling of the excess heat.  But now the current called AMOC is gradually slowing down which means that less water is being carried and cooling down.  So warm waters will get warmer, which increase temperature around the Earth, and also provide more fuel for hurricanes making them more dangerous.  The satellite called GRACE will be used to measure the data of how much mass of the water on the Earths surface changes, and by doing this we will be able to see how the ocean pressure changes over time, and how it affects the surroundings. 

 Here is an artist picture of how the satellites will be measuring the ocean directly below.

Information gotten from:

http://news.yahoo.com/blistering-october-temperatures-continue-hottest-record-222400245.htmlhttp://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-finds-new-way-to-track-ocean-currents-from-space