The “butterfly effect” of the ocean floor: what is it & how does it affect climate change? Cambridge scientists explain

ORIGIN: https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/

An international research team led by the University of Cambridge found that deep ocean turbulence affects our lives in the span of a human lifetime, and not thousands of years like previously thought.

The ocean floor has ties to climate change, and on a much smaller time scale than previously thought.

Deep ocean turbulence is a process that distributes heat, nutrients and carbon from the surface to the sea floor and back. However, tools used to predict the effects don’t represent this turbulence well.

Climate Models and the Ocean

Researchers identified several fast-moving climatic processes affected by small-scale turbulence, which include the distribution of heat, nutrients and carbon. Models require significant improvements in how they predict how turbulence in the deep ocean will affect life on land.

“There is a microphysics of the ocean, similar to cloud physics, that is extremely difficult and expensive to observe, but it governs our lives on human-relevant timescales — from ocean circulation changed to ecosystem dynamics, with implications for fisheries and food security, to coastal flooding and heatwaves. We need the