Nov. 16, 2016

An article by Jeff Tollefson in the November 16 edition of Nature magazine, "How much longer can Antarctica’s hostile ocean delay global warming?," features SOCCOM researchers Joellen (leader of the SOCCOM modeling group), Ken Johnson (SOCCOM Associate Director), and Jorge Sarmiento (SOCCOM director).  

Joellen Russell wasn’t prepared for the 10-metre waves that pounded her research vessel during an expedition south of New Zealand. “It felt like the ship would be crushed each time we rolled into a mountain of water,” recalls Russell, an ocean modeller at the University of Arizona in Tucson. At one point, she was nearly carried overboard by a rogue wave.

But what really startled her was the stream of data from sensors analysing the seawater. As the ship pitched and groaned, she realized that the ocean surface was low in oxygen, high in carbon and extremely acidic — surprising signs that nutrient-rich water typically found in the deep sea had reached the surface. As it turned out, Russell was riding waves of ancient water that had not been exposed to the atmosphere for centuries....read more