Energy, Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Ocean Currents under study for Global Effects

By Joshua S. Hill

Friday, August 10, 2007

For those of us who have been hiking up a mountain, there is no denying the ferocity of the wind. Sometimes you might get lucky and not have to tie your hat around your chin, but for the most part, the higher you get, the trickier the wind decides to be.

It's all a matter of air currents. When you stick a giant piece of rock in the middle of a normally free flowing current of air, the natural instinct (if a breeze could be said to have instinct) is to find its own way past. This will inevitably lead to an increase in wind speeds as it forces its way through any gap possible. This phenomenon creates those gusts of winds that run down your street, through the mountains, and whistles through your house.

Funnily enough, the same theory exists for underwater currents. Many trivia buffs will know that the tallest mountain on earth is not Mount Everest, but in fact Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano from the Hawaiian Islands that rises some 33,000 feet. So imagine all the currents of water that have to get past Mauna Kea, or any of the other thousands of undersea mountains. A landmark study led by Florida State University researcher Louis St. Laurent has begun to deal with these currents, and their impact on the wider planet.

St. Laurent - in collaboration with scientists from the US and France -- studied the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, located roughly halfway between New York and Portugal and more than a mile down. The evidence garnered has provided the first proof that the currents sweeping through the undersea mountain ranges is creating a lot of the mixing of warm and cold water throughout the Atlantic.

Described as being just like mixing milk or cream in to your coffee, the mixing of warm water is 'stirred' together with the colder ocean waters that run along the seabed. This mixing is what keeps the balance of temperatures that makes the Gulf Stream -- the current of water that runs along the east coast of America and Canada and deposits itself out across Europe -- one of the most important features of our planets oceans.

Without the distribution and diffusion of water that the Gulf Stream provides, warmer water would gather rather than being maneuvered throughout the entire ocean, and the strength of the Gulf Stream would diminish. The information gathered by the team will be used for models that will help predict the effect the global warming will take on our planet. The more detailed the information gathered from research teams like St. Laurent's, the more detailed the answers will be.

As a side note, if you are interested in knowing just how powerful it is down there, with the currents rushing through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, here's a little example. Your average light bulb is 100 watts of energy output. The energy produced by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge currents is equal to 5 million watts of energy output. The first nuclear power station went in to operation on June 27, 1954 -- it put out the same amount of energy.