A team of researchers from Iceland, the US and Norway have spent the last month exploring the chilly waters between Iceland and Greenland in search of a relatively new southbound current called the North Icelandic Jet. The current is “new” in that two of the researchers on the cruise, Drs. Steingrímur Jonsson and Hedinn Valdimarsson from the Marine Research Institute, Iceland, found it in 2004.
They, along with Bob Pickart, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, Kjetil Våge, from the University of Bergen in Norway, and Laura de Steur, from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have been trying to further document the characteristics of this current (which they did) during the cruise.
So why do we care? The bottom line is that this new southbound current may mean that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, the AMOC, may be less sensitive to climate change than was previously thought. No “Day after Tomorrow” scenarios where the AMOC stops and basically halts the redistribution of heat from the equator to the poles.
Here’s a nice graphic, courtesy of the cruise website, that shows where researchers went to monitor this new current:
Researchers on a Sept. 2011 cruise took ocean measurements all along the northern part of Iceland to successfully document the existence and behavior of the North Icelandic Jet
You can also read about the underpinnings of their research findings in a recent article in Nature Geoscience.
From my perspective, one of the most impressive aspects of the cruise was the tremendous effort made to bring the science as it happens, to the public — there were writers, photographers, videographers — even a Norwegian journalist who wrote blog posts in Norwegian.
I’ve spent time on another WHOI boat, the Oceanus, and I have to say I quite enjoyed the feeling of being virtually there that the website gives you. Check out this video about just being on board the ship:
Life aboard from Benjamin Harden on Vimeo.
Hats off to all involved — great science and great outreach.