The North Atlantic is believed to represent the largest ocean sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere, yet little is known about its temporal variability. We report an 18-year time series of upper-ocean inorganic carbon observations from the northwestern subtropical North Atlantic near Bermuda that indicates substantial variability in this sink. We deduce that the carbon ...

Fresh water hosing simulations, in which a fresh water flux is imposed in the North Atlantic to force fluctuations of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, have been routinely performed, first to study the climatic signature of different states of this circulation, then, under present or future conditions, to investigate the potential impact of a partial melting of the Greenland ice ...

Benthic foraminiferal faunas in a piston core from 3331 meters at 44 degrees N on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge show striking variations in the relative abundance of species. Uvigerina peregrina, which is broadly distributed today in the South Atlantic and in the Pacific in water that has been long isolated from the surface, is absent in the North and Equatorial Atlantic at depths occupied by highly o...

The mechanisms that determine population structure in highly mobile marine species are poorly understood, but useful towards understanding the evolution of diversity, and essential for effective conservation and management. In this study, we compare putative sperm whale populations located in the Gulf of Mexico, western North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea and North Sea using mtDNA control region ...

[1] It is generally accepted that surface freshwater anomalies in the Southern Ocean drive increases in North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation via a bipolar density see-saw. We find that a Southern Ocean freshwater pulse of comparable magnitude to meltwater pulse 1A, shuts down, instead of strengthens, NADW in a glacial climate simulation. Unlike the modern-day simulation, the glacial exper...

[1] Benthic foraminiferal dC and Cd/Ca studies suggest that deep Atlantic circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum was very different from today, with high-nutrient (low dC, high Cd) deep Southern Ocean Water (SOW) penetrating far into the North Atlantic. However, if some glacial dC values are biased by productivity artifacts and/or air-sea exchange processes, then the existing dC data may b...

The influence of Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on the atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic sector during winter is investigated by performing experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM). These consist of a 30-year run with observed SST anomalies for the period 1961–90 confined geographically to the Atlantic Ocean, and of a control run with clima...

In the 1960s North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SST) cooled rapidly. The magnitude of the cooling was largest in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG), and was coincident with a rapid freshening of the SPG. Here we analyze hindcasts of the 1960s North Atlantic cooling made with the UK Met Office’s decadal prediction system (DePreSys), which is initialised using observations. It is shown ...

There are three described subspecies of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus): B. p. physalus Linnaeus, 1758 in the Northern Hemisphere, B. p. quoyi Fischer, 1829 in the Southern Hemisphere, and a recently described pygmy form, B. p. patachonica Burmeister, 1865. The discrete distribution in the North Pacific and North Atlantic raises the question of whether a single Northern Hemisphere subspecies...