This is the strongest ocean current.

Original paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adb31c

Article derived from the paper: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03032025/global-warming-will-weaken-antarctic-circumpolar-current


Quote:

Fresh water from melting Antarctic ice is projected to weaken the world’s most powerful ocean current by 20 percent in the next quarter century, an international team of scientists concluded in a study published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. A weakening of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current [ACC]—one of Earth’s strongest climate engines—would have dire consequences, including “more climate variability, with greater extremes in certain regions, and accelerated global warming,” said lead author Bishakhdatta Gayen, an associate professor of fluid mechanics at the University of Melbourne.

As sea and land ice melts the fresh, cold water floats on top of warmer but salty and so heavier ocean water, preventing the “overturning” part of the Global Overturning Meridional Circulation.


Quote:

The ACC is the only ocean current to flow around the entire planet unimpeded, carrying more than 100 times more water than all the world’s rivers combined. It reaches 100 to 200 miles wide and as deep as three miles as it circles Antarctica from west to east, mixing water from the planet’s largest ocean basins—the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic.

So a substantial current and so if the ACC changes it will have a big impact on the other oceans—the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic—it passes through.


NB: The troll “Bobby” aka “Booby” aka “Goober” told me Tasmania was IN the ACC. Then the clown posted a map showing the ACC was over 1000Kms SOUTH of Tasmania. LOL, what an idiot!



Quote:

The ACC streams off the shore of southern Australia and southern Africa and flows through the channel between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctica Peninsula, forming the “main mechanism for the exchange of heat, carbon dioxide, chemicals and biology across these ocean basins,” the researchers wrote. “Without that mixing, if the redistribution stops, you can start getting hot spots or cold spots,” Gayen said. If the ocean becomes more stagnant, the likelihood of marine heatwaves and associated impacts like toxic algal blooms increases. As ocean regions warm, they also expand so a weaker ACC could accelerate sea level rise, he added. In the Southern Hemisphere, the ocean off the coast of eastern Australia is currently about 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, and the record ocean temperature has resulted in severe coral reef damage in the region during the last few months. In recent years, there have been record-breaking ocean heat waves in the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific around New Zealand.

For “Bobby:” the Tasman sea is off Australia’s SE coast to the islands of New Zealand.


https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ACC.jpg


Quote:

Gayen said that a 2023 paper in the journal Nature Climate Change documented how freshwater from melting ice has already been weakening the overturning, or vertical circulation, of Antarctic shelf waters, which also reduces oxygen in the deep ocean. “Analyzing it for the Southern Ocean, we found such a remarkable outcome, that the ACC will slow down 20 percent in the next 30 years,” he said. “This is a very rich model in terms of resolving eddies,” he added, which is important because the full effects of the thousands of loops and swirls along the edges of the ACC across thousands of miles of ocean have not been accurately represented by climate models. Co-author Taimoor Sohail, a postdoctoral research associate at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Science at the University of Melbourne, said previous studies show that a growing north-south temperature gradient in the Southern Ocean would speed up the ACC. The new study, along with other recent research, strongly suggests that the salinity changes caused by freshwater from melting ice “far outweigh” temperature effects on the ACC. Gayen said one of the big uncertainties is exactly how much ice is melting. Some recent research estimates the thawing is producing 28.8 trillion gallons of meltwater per year. “We don’t really know much about East Antarctica,” he said. “But one thing is clear, there is a connection between melting and an ACC slowdown.”

Why do we not see such posts in the supposed Environment MRB? Could it be that Booby is too stupid and too uneducated to understand science? Hmm?