{"id":48116,"date":"2024-10-15T11:13:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T15:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/?post_type=news&p=48116"},"modified":"2024-10-15T11:13:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T15:13:43","slug":"tipping-points-in-ocean-currents-signal-climate-risks","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/tipping-points-in-ocean-currents-signal-climate-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Tipping Points in Ocean Currents Signal Climate Risks\u202f"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team led by Johns\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Hopkins researchers has developed a mathematical model that sheds light on how small but crucial differences in the way water vapor travels through the atmosphere can lead to major shifts in ocean currents, potentially signaling \u201ctipping points\u201d in the Earth\u2019s climate.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The team\u2019s models, described in\u00a0<\/span>The Journal of Physical Oceanography<\/span><\/i><\/a>, could enable a deeper understanding of climate dynamics and generate more accurate predictions\u2014essential to developing strategies that can address and potentially even mitigate the impacts of climate change.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last thousand years, a pattern of ocean currents known as the \u2018ocean conveyor belt\u201d exchanges water between the surface and the deep ocean. Scientists are concerned about its breakdown, which could trigger significant climate shifts worldwide. Some hypothesized that similar changes caused the collapse of the Mayan civilization. But we don\u2019t yet grasp the mechanisms behind these shifts,\u201d said team member\u00a0<\/span>Ioannis Kevrekidis<\/span><\/a>, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Applied Mathematics and Statistics and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the\u00a0<\/span>Whiting School of Engineering.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur objective is to detect when we are on the brink of major shifts,\u201d said study leader\u00a0Anand Gnanadesikan<\/a>, a professor in the Krieger School of Arts & Science\u2019s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers analyzed the geography of the Earth\u2019s hydrological cycle, which transports water vapor in the atmosphere. Traditionally, it has been thought that the North Pacific receives more of this freshwater than the North Atlantic, making it the main location for transforming light surface waters into dense deep ones.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By combining stochastic considerations with advanced bifurcation theory\u2014a method for analyzing how solutions to differential equations change with parameter variations\u2014the team pinpointed critical points where ocean circulation patterns either collapse or restore. \u00a0They found that there was a significant variety of potential configurations of the resulting conveyor belt circulations, as well as interesting dynamics driving the transitions between them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among their key findings was the sensitivity of Atlantic and Pacific Ocean currents to changes, depending on the characteristics of the water cycle, such as precipitation. By constructing a model that simulates the behavior of these currents under different hydrological cycle conditions, the researchers were able to identify various patterns and quantify their stability.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They found that increasing the water cycle\u2019s intensity in their model caused an initial collapse of overturning in the Pacific, followed by a temporarily strengthened overturning in the Atlantic. However, as the water cycle strengthened further, a surprising transition occurred: the Atlantic circulation shut off, while the Pacific now started overturning to intermediate depths. When the hydrological cycle increased still further, both circulations collapsed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough deep-sea sediment cores\u2014samples of materials collected by drilling into the seabed\u2014show evidence of such transitions happening in the past, \u00a0this study is the first to predict and explain why they occur,\u201d said Gnanadesikan.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The team also studied the impact of rising global temperatures and found that having Northern polar temperatures rise faster than Southern polar temperatures\u2014as has occurred in historical times\u2014in their models contributed to a significant disruption of the ocean\u2019s vertical circulation, or overturning.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cOur work sheds light on how ocean currents behave and shows that different changes can lead to similar outcomes in ocean currents. The integration of mathematical modeling, advanced stochastic techniques, and climate science insights offers a powerful tool for understanding and predicting critical transitions in many complex systems,\u201d Kevrekidis said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

JHU study co-authors included Thomas Haine, Renske Gelderloos, Marie-Aude Pradal, and undergraduate student Jingwen Liu\u2014all of the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences\u2019\u00a0Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences<\/a>; and Jennifer Sleeman and Jay Brett of the\u00a0Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory<\/a>. Gianluca Fabiani and Constantinos Siettos of the University of Naples were also collaborators.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis work underscores the importance of collaboration between domain experts in climate science and applied mathematicians. It\u2019s their deep insights into Earth\u2019s oceans and atmosphere that provide the foundational principles driving our models\u201d, Kevrekidis said.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The study was funded by DARPA.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article was originally posted by the Johns Hopkins Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-48116","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","news_categories-research"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTipping Points in Ocean Currents Signal Climate Risks\u202f - Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/tipping-points-in-ocean-currents-signal-climate-risks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tipping Points in Ocean Currents Signal Climate Risks\u202f - Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A team led by Johns\u00a0\u00a0Hopkins researchers has developed a mathematical model that sheds light on how small but crucial differences in the way water vapor travels through the atmosphere can…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/tipping-points-in-ocean-currents-signal-climate-risks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tipping Points in Ocean Currents Signal Climate Risks\u202f - 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