On a scale from 1 to 10 for scientific surprises, I personally come to a 9 for the results of a new study described below, a result what the author had foreseen.
Susan Lozier, an oceanographer at Duke University who was the lead author of the research published end of January in Science gives herself a mark of 7.
I suppose it must have been a huge surprise when you looked at the results of the study, which come from the $ 32 million OSNAP, or “Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic,” program.In the essence, it is about the so-called overturning — in which water not only sinks but returns southward again in the ocean depths. A new 21-month series of observations in the frigid waters off Greenland has led to the discovery that most of the overturning occurs to the east, rather than to the west of Greenland
If this proves to be the case, then the climate models that previously assumed that circulation would slow down due to global warming may have to be revised.
An article in the Washington Post gives you an excellent overview of the impact of the scientific surprise.
