Spices, Power and Rock – The Pacific Ocean

As the song goes, “the winds blow over the ocean”. What do the oceans do to you? What does the biggest of all oceans, the Pacific does for you? Spicing, Powering & Rocking!

(from Encyclopadia Britannica)

Avant Propose 

 [adapted from [1]]:

"Spicing the Indian Ocean: The Indonesian Throughflow is the only low-latitude inter-ocean current between world oceans, linking the Pacific to the Indian Ocean through boundary currents along the western shores of the Pacific. The Indonesian Throughflow sources the Indian Ocean with warm, less salty water from the North Pacific Ocean via the Mindanao Current and water from the South Pacific Ocean via the New Guinea Coastal Current. These Pacific western boundary currents are important players in the global climate system since the closing of the Panama Isthmus during the Pliocene and thus cutting the exchange between tropical Pacific and tropical Atlantic."

"Powering winter storms: In winter, the warm subtropical currents in the along the western boundary of Pacific Basin supply enormous amounts of heat and moisture into the atmosphere, feeding the North Pacific storm tracks. As cold and dry sub-polar air comes into contact with the warm water carried poleward by the subtropical western boundary currents, heat and moisture to fuel the storms are extracted from the surface water."

"Rocking the globe: The Pacific is the home of the El Nino, an inter-annual ocean-atmosphere oscillation, which severely disrupts global weather patterns worldwide. El Nino affects ecosystems, agriculture, tropical cyclones, drought, bushfires, floods and other weather events worldwide. This El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most prominent source of global climate variability. The low-latitude western boundary currents in the Pacific are transporting mass into the equatorial Pacific. The western boundary currents critically influence the Western Pacific Warm Pool (a region of sea surface temperatures warmer than 28.5 C). In consequence, they affect the life cycle of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, the East Asian monsoon and the Indian/Southeast Asian monsoon."

Western Boundary Currents - what?

Three events, same special agent of change: Western Boundary Currents. These currents are a common marine agent with manifold impacts on the global ocean circulation and climate. The warming of the western coast of all continents is the best-known feature that these currents trigger. However, there are many more features as the examples of Pacific Ocean show. Anyhow, how are these boundary currents set-up? That is the story to tell here, because the impacts of the western boundary currents on the global ocean circulation and climate variability are manifold.

Take three: winds, continents and rotation

The winds stir the surface layer of the sea, driving waves, currents and mixing. Water flows at the surface of the ocean mainly are to the West in tropical zones and the East in temperate regions. Closer to polar regions the circulation pattern gets a bit different. In the south, the Circumpolar Current circles eastward the Antarctic continent. In the north, the continents hinder such a mighty flow of water around the globe.

Surface currents in the North Atlantic (model) -Credit: 

Erik Behrens (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The continents shaping the ocean basins of Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean hinder ocean currents flowing around the globe, with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Southern Polar Ocean being the sole exception. Otherwise, ocean currents arrange as big gyres. The gyres in the tropical-temperate zones of the oceans show gentle, broad flows towards the equator in the east and swift, narrow and poleward currents in the west. The currents in the west, the Gulf Stream, for example, flow quite close to the continent before they get unstable and turn eastward into the open ocean.

The rapid spinning of planet Earth causes the different water flows in eastern and western parts of the oceans. The easterly winds in the tropical regions, the westerly winds in the temperate regions, and the confinement of the ocean between north-south boundaries together alone would not cause this east-west asymmetry. The interplay of the Earth's rotation, the winds, and the continents causes the narrow western boundary currents and the broad eastern flow of the ocean surface waters in the subtropical gyre.

The earth rotation affects in a different manner a blob of water at the pole or the equator. A blob of water exactly at the pole rotates around its vertical axis. A blob of water at the equator is swung around Earth without being rotated around its vertical axis. Between both places, the situation changes smoothly from one extreme to the other. Thus due to the rotation of the earth, blobs of water experience a torque that depends on their latitude.

Blobs of water situated at the same latitude have the same amount of torque that stems from the rotation of the Earth but the contribution to their torque that is arising from other sources may vary. Blobs of surface water acquire additional torque from the winds blowing over the sea when these winds vary in strength or direction over the blob.

If a blob of water driven by the wind moves straight east-west, thus along a latitude, then little happens to it beyond the contribution to its torque that stems from the wind. However, if the same blob of water moves poleward (or towards the equator), then the internal repartition of its torque has to adjust. Adjustment is done by changing the shape of the blog. Changing the blob's form requires that water flows within the blob change. Finally, these changes result in the east-west asymmetry of ocean currents, with narrow western boundary currents and the broad eastern return-flows. The western boundary currents have a second dynamic function. The torque added by the wind has to be dissipated somewhere in the ocean. Dissipation happens through the high lateral shear in the western boundary currents and bottom friction.

The German research vessel METEOR
off the coast  of Brazil Credit: MARUM -
Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
(distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

[adapted from [1]]: “Much of modern wind-driven ocean circulation theory was derived from a quest to understand these ocean currents. Knowledge of the effect of the Earth’s rotation on western boundary currents, and of the wind driven water flow [Ekman transport], led to ground-breaking advances: that wind stress is a driving agent of ocean currents, but it is the horizontal change rather than the absolute strength that is important; that latitudinal gradients in the effect of Earth’s rotation on the horizontal motion cause a flow intensification towards the west of the ocean basins; and that ocean wind-forced ocean currents include the equatorial current system, the low-latitude and subtropical western boundary currents.”

Name them, the Western Boundary Currents, some

Within the North Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream along the East Coast of the USA is a well-known western boundary current. The Gulf Stream is part of the subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its counterpart in the subtropical gyre of the South Atlantic Ocean is the Brazil Current. Between both gyres flow the equatorial currents in the tropical belt. These currents link the two oceanic gyres along the continental borders. In the Atlantic Ocean, that link transports surface water northward along the American continent. Further in the south the subtropical gyre of the South Atlantic Ocean ties with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and through the Agulhas Current with the subtropical gyre of the Indian Ocean.

Within the subtropical gyres of the Pacific Ocean, the western boundary currents are the Kuroshio Current in the Northern Pacific Ocean, and the East Australian Current in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The Pacific tropical belt western boundary currents include the Mindanao Current northern of the Equator and the New Guinea Coastal Current south of the Equator. The circulation system of the equatorial Pacific connects the currents in both hemispheres.

Within the Indian Ocean, the Somalia Current along the east-coats of Africa is a western boundary current. That current changes the direction of its flow with the seasonal switch of the Monsoon winds. The surface flow of New Guinea Coastal Current in the Pacific Ocean exhibits the same annual feature. The New Guinea Coastal Current changes its direction with the monsoon season. The related under current, the New Guinea Coastal Undercurrent that is flowing in the depth of the sea, flows poleward all the year.

Five Simple Ocean Gyres
(from Wikipedia)

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com

info@mundusmaris.org

[1] Dunxin Hu, Lixin Wu, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Alexandre Ganachaud, Bo Qiu, Arnold L. Gordon, Xiaopei Lin, Zhaohui Chen, Shijian Hu, Guojian Wang, QingyeWang, Janet Sprintall, Tangdong Qu, Yuji Kashino, FanWang & William S. Kessler, Pacific western boundary currents and their roles in climate, Nature 522, 299–308 (18 June 2015) doi:10.1038/nature145

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v522/n7556/full/nature14504.html

Marine treasure – keep your nerves!

Jellyfish are different, at least some of them. The comb jellyfish “Pacific sea gooseberry” (Pleurobrachia bachei) hunts for food. It is a predator, paddling through the sea, and grasping its prey with sticky tentacles.

Pacific sea gooseberry
(from Wikipedia Commons)

Recent analysis of the Pacific sea gooseberry revealed a fascinating detail, making them much of an alien [1]. Their nervous system miss the habitual set of components that are found in most other animals. The chemical signals (neurotransmitter) of the Pacific sea gooseberry, which make the nerves work are different. The Pacific sea gooseberry does not use the set of chemical signals that we know from most animals.

Without question, the Pacific sea gooseberry has a fully developed nervous system. It consist of a network with a ring of nerves around the mouth. The nervous systems senses light, detects prey and coordinates moves of muscles. However, the nervous system performing these operations is using different chemical signals. That is less than a detail. It indicates that nervous systems evolved on Earth twice, at least. The deciphered gene code of the Pacific sea gooseberry shows this.

Other differences between Pacific sea gooseberry and other animals are found for immune and development genes, and respectively for the related physiological processes.

Whether comb jellies descend from ancient organisms that lived 580 million years ago (in the Ediacaran [*] ), as some speculate, is a provocative hypothesis. If that is the case, then the Pacific sea gooseberry may trace that ancient world to present times and indicate how complex this ancient world was already. Ecosystems with prey-predator relationship existing more than half a billion years ago!

A comb jellyfish
(from Wikipedia Commons)

A less precocious hypothesis would be that the evolution of Pacific sea gooseberry included the replacement of the chemical signals that we know to be common in nearly all animals.

What should be noted, beyond any speculation, that the sea is full of treasures. Many we only do not know; one more was discovered recently. 

Understanding that nervous systems, immune systems or development process can be constructed from different building blocks is deep insight with possibly far-reaching consequences, be it for regenerative medicine or synthetic biology [3].

Comb jellyfish [**] are classified as a sister group to jellyfish and sea anemones. This kind of animals are ancient and lived in the ocean since very long time, even if the modern species evolved more recently. These animals have in common that the distinction between head and rears does not apply to them as it applies for slugs, fish and humans. This feature makes them simpler and they are put at the bottom of the tree of life, comb jellies among them. Thus it is useful to assume that similar functions evolved several times along parallel paths.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com

info@mundusmaris.org

[*] The Ediacaran (635 - 542 million years) is the geological period preceding the Cambrian Period. The Ediacaran biota have little resemblance to modern lifeforms and include the oldest organisms with tissues; hard-shelled animals had yet to evolve.

[**] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_jelly

[1] Ewen Callaway (2014) Jelly genome mystery, Nature (509) p. 411

[2] Leonid L. Moroz et al. (2014), The ctenophore genome and the evolutionary origins of neural systems, NATURE, doi:10.1038/nature13400

[3] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/22/world/science-health-world/simplest-animals-may-help-cure-brain-disease/#.U4dkbnJ_tgA

.

Dirty sea-bottom, litter everywhere – and: bon appetit !

To recall, sea-birds confuse small bits of plastic with food. They swallow the bits of plastic and it kills them. [a] To recall, abandoned fishing gear entangles fish, turtles and marine mammals, and its kills them. Floating plastic bags do the same. And so on, but that is not the end of the story [1].

The NOAA Marine Debris Program funds projects
to remove derelict fishing nets and other debris
from marine waters, where they can entangle marine life.
 (NOAA)

Each year some 6.4 million tonnes of litter are entering the oceans, or about one kilogram for each human being. Most litter stems from cities. “The world's cities currently generate around 1.3 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste a year, or 1.2 kilogram per city-dweller per day.” [b Thus, the litter discharged into the sea corresponds to about 4-5% of the municipal solid waste produced in the cities of the world. In that sense its a small part of waste produced by the nine billion humans, but as any dumping it causes problems.

More generally, marine litter is defined as ‘‘any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment." Persistent littering the sea likely has started with disposing “clinker” from steamships and currently has found its peak with “plastic”.

Clinker, the residue of burnt coal, was commonly dumped from steamships well into the 20th century. In the Mediterranean Sea, its occurrence on the deep sea-floor has been shown to coincide with such shipping routes.

Currently, the most abundant marine litter is plastic. Only part of the plastic items float at the sea surface or close to it. Two third of the plastic sinks to the bottom of the sea when converted by fouling organisms. Therefore plastic accumulation on the seabed is more abundant than in the open sea. Thus, below the floating garbage is an even bigger garbage dump at the sea bottom.

Litter is present in all marine habitats, from beaches to the most remote points in the oceans, such as the Midway Islands in the Pacific [a. The particular distribution and accumulation of litter in the ocean is influenced by water movements, bottom morphology and economic activities.

On the global scale, the ocean currents sweep the litter to the centre of the ocean-gyres where it accumulates, called the big garbage patch. On the local scale, litter is washed upon the beach. On the hidden scale, litters is channelled to the deep sea. Marine litters accumulates in particular high densities in submarine canyons.

from: http://www.classroomatsea.net/
portugal/tobi_cruise/index.html
(from coast down to > 4000m depth)

Submarine canyons act as passages for litter transport from continental shelves into deeper waters. Submarine canyons are areas where organic debris accumulates. The debris is food for bottom-dwelling fauna and suspension-feeding invertebrates. They are abundant in submarine canyons. The accumulation of plastics in submarine canyons likely has a detrimental effects on theses deep-sea organisms.

A survey [2] of European seas published in April 2014, confirmed again that marine litter is found everywhere, from the beach down to the deep sea. The survey uses standardized methods to categorize the litter and to quantify its abundance. Most common litter items included, non-surprisingly, plastic bags, glass bottles and abandoned fishing lines and nets:

• Plastic represented 41% of the litter items in European seas, whilst abandoned fishing gear accounted for 34% of the total. Clinker, glass and metal are least common. Density and composition of litter in European seas is comparable to what has found in other parts of the world ocean.

• Litter density in submarine canyons reached an average of 12.2 – 6,4 items per ten-thousand square meters, or the double of the litter density found elsewhere.

A litter density of 12.2 – 6,4 items per ten-thousand square meters means to find about 10 items of litter on a surface wide as a football field! 

A list of locations with highest litter densities in European waters includes for example the Lisbon Canyon in continental shelf of Portugal or the Blanes Canyon in the continental shelf of the Mediterranean sea of Spain. Theses canyons were formed when the sea-level was much lower than today.

Litter is a serious risk for the marine environment. Entanglement in abandoned fishing gear is a serious threat for birds, turtles and marine mammals, it is also causing high mortality of fish through ‘‘ghost fishing''. Beyond other threats, plastic is a source of toxic chemicals that is lethal to marine fauna.

from: http://manuals.deere.com/

The degradation of plastics generates micro-plastics that are ingested by organisms, leading to contaminants across trophic levels up to the fish [3] that we may eat. So plastic debris may return to their source, finally.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com

info@mundusmaris.org

[1] José G.B. Derraik, 2002, The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris, Marine Pollution Bulletin 44(9), pp. 842-852.

[2] Christopher K. Pham et. Al, 2014. Marine Litter Distribution and Density in European Seas, from the Shelves to Deep Basins. PLOS ONE, 9(4), pp. 1-13.

[3] Chelsea M. Rochman et al. 2013, Ingested plastic transfers hazardous chemicals to fish and induces hepatic stress, Nature, doi:10.1038/srep03263;

[a] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7xCOh_UCLJg, 

[b] Economist, 7^th June 2012, http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/daily-chart-3

[c] http://5gyres.org/posts/2013/12/09/do_toxic_chemicals_absorbed_by_plastic_transfer_to_fish_after_ingestion_yes/

Tami found its Niche, and swept the Sea

The majestic baleen whales are filter-feeders eating vast amounts of small organisms. They typically seek out a concentration of zooplankton and filter the prey from the water using their baleen. Great, actively swimming filter-feeders evolved among sharks, rays, fishes and well-known whales. 

from: http://www.ocean-explorer.org/wale-und-delfine.html

 

 

Up to now, animals occupying the ecological niche of “actively swimming filter-feeders” had not been identified among the fossils of the early Palaeozoic era, about 500 Million years ago. The known large swimming animals of that time, the Anomalocaridids [*] were carnivore predators. 

However, that understanding was incomplete. 

Recently, the fossilized Tamisiocaris borealis (“Tami”) was found in North Greenland [1]. Its frontal body part clearly is specialized for suspension feeding. “Tami” bears long, thin and evenly spaced spines, which are are fitted out with dense rows of long and fine spines. Evidently, “Tami” was feeding on small plankton. It got its food by sweep-net capture of small food-particle (down to 0.5 mm), thus as small as a copepod.

Why get excited about that? 

Fossilized "Tami" - [2, **]

So far, large, swimming suspension feeders were found during the later Cambrian, a bit less than 500 Million years ago. Their existence indicates a deep-water ecosystem supported by high primary productivity and nutrient flux. 

The presence of swimming suspension feeders in the early Cambrian, more than 525 Million years ago indicate that a complex deep-water ecosystem supported by high primary productivity and nutrient flux existed already at that time. Thus, these Cambrian deep-water ecosystems seem to have been already quite modern – may be less in terms of species, but certainly in terms of viable ecosystem niches.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com

info@mundusmaris.org

[1] A suspension-feeding anomalocarid from the Early Cambrian; Jakob Vinther, Martin Stein, Nicholas R. Longrich & David A. T. Harper; Nature 507, 496–499 (27 March 2014)

[2] http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2014/03/27/earth-s-first-apex-predator-became-gentle-giant

[*] from Wikipedia: Anomalocaridids are a group of very early marine animals known primarily from fossils found in Cambrian deposits in China, United States, Canada, Poland and Australia. Anomalocarids are the largest Cambrian animals known — some Chinese forms may have reached 2 m in length — and most of them were probably active carnivores.

[**] Artist's view at "http://paleocreations.com/images/536.jpg" on http://paleocreations.com/index.php

No Paper Heavens, Marine Protected Areas Examined

Conservation of marine biological diversity calls to foster protected sea-life from exploitation. Putting part of the seas under protection is a means to achieve that. In the last years the size and the the number of Marine Protected Areas increase rapidly. Currently about 2% of the world's seas are under full protection. The target is to protect 10% of territorial waters by 2020. Currently the degree of protection varies, e.g. hook-and-line fishing may be allowed, and some of the Marine Protected Areas qualify just as "paper parks".

Marine Protected Areas should generate socio-economic benefits to make their case. Some marine Protected Areas are known not to reach their full potential because of illegal harvesting, mis-regulation that allow detrimental harvesting, or mis-sizing so that animals leave the Marine Protected Areas when living their habitual life.

The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) [1]. 

Recently Graham Edgar and colleagues [*] examined the conservation benefits of 87 Marine Protected Areas worldwide. Their insight: benefits of Marine Protected Areas increase dramatically with the accumulation of five key properties: no take, well enforced, age, size, and isolation.

By its very nature, isolation is difficult in marine environments. Water and species move. Nevertheless the natural gradients of marine environments provide for guidance about natural confinements.

More than half of the Marine Protected Areas examined by Graham Edgar had only one or two key properties. These protected areas were ecologically indistinguishable from unprotected areas. They conclude: meeting only two of the five properties does not have much effect, but bundling four or five has effect.

Comparing effective Marine Protected Areas, which have four or five key features, with non-protected seas is indicating that total fish biomass is about three times higher. Also, effective Marine Protected Areas have twice as many large fish species, five times more large fish biomass, and fourteen times more shark biomass than fished areas.

Global conservation targets based on area alone will not effectively protect marine biodiversity. Design of Marine Protected Areas and their durable management needs five for conservation: no take, enforce, age, size, and as much isolation as possible. That is a difficult task but not mission impossible.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com

info@mundusmaris.org

[1]  IUCN and UNEP-WCMC (Oct 2013). The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Available at:www.protectedplanet.net.

[*] Global conservation outcomes depend on marine protected areas with five key features; Graham J. Edgar, Rick D. Stuart-Smith, Trevor J. Willis, Stuart Kininmonth, Susan C. Baker, Stuart Banks, Neville S. Barrett, Mikel A. Becerro, Anthony T. F. Bernard, Just Berkhout, Colin D. Buxton, Stuart J. Campbell, Antonia T. Cooper, Marlene Davey, Sophie C. Edgar, Günter Försterra, David E. Galván, Alejo J. Irigoyen, David J. Kushner, Rodrigo Moura, P. Ed Parnell, Nick T. Shears, German Soler, Elisabeth M. A. Strain & Russell J. Thomson; Nature 506, 216–220 (13 February 2014)

Climate Choke Point East of Greenland

The Arctic Ocean has an important role in Earth’s climate. The Arctic is part of the globe that is most sensitive to climate change. The choke point for the Arctic Ocean is the Fram Strait.  Currently the Arctic is shifting to a new normal; sea-ice is thinning, permafrost is thawing, and tundra is greening [1]. 

Arctic sea ice minimum 2012 compared to 30 average minimum [a]

The extend of its summertime sea-ice cover determines how much sun-light is reflected back into space. The Arctic receives important freshwater inflow from North American and Siberian rivers. Sea ice is export through the Fram Strait into the North Atlantic and is freshening the most salty ocean of the globe. The Frame Strait between Greenland and Svalbard is the only deep passage linking the Arctic Ocean to the global ocean. The main export vein of deep Arctic waters goes through this strait. Deep Arctic waters are forming in the interior of the Arctic ocean basin.

Freezing and cooling produce deep water in the Arctic ocean. Only if it is exported at depth out of the Arctic Ocean, then it is contributing to the global thermohaline circulation. The thermohaline circulation of the oceans is the slow vertical overturning of its water that brings heat and oxygen into the depth of the world ocean. One of the drivers of this circulation is the deep, cold and salty water that is flowing through the Fram Strait out in depth from the Arctic Ocean. To understand climate change processes it has to be assessed how the outflow of deep water from the Arctic Ocean varied during last several ten-thousand years.

Flow through Fram Strait - top/in & bottom/out [b]

Did the Arctic Ocean export waters through cold and warm climates, or did this export shut-off in warmer climates? Ratios of the radionuclides thorium-230 (230Th) and protactinium-231 (231Pa) in the sediments at the sea-bottom can be used to assess this question [2].

These radioactive tracers are produced in sea water by radioactive decay of natural uranium, which is transported by the rivers into the sea. Thorium and protactinium are not soluble in seawater and attach in a different time-depending manner to particles made of different minerals. These particles drop to the sea bottom and so remove the radioactive traces from the water column. This process is called “scavenging”. The “scavenging” of thorium and protactinium happens with a different speed. Much of the thorium will drop to the bottom even if much deep water is flowing out of the Arctic ocean. However an important part of the protactinium would be swept out through the Fram Strait if the outflow of Arctic waters is happening. Thus, the thorium and protactinium concentrations in sediments of the Arctic Ocean vary with the strength of the outflow of deep water through the Fram Strait. Whether that outflow varied during glacial, de-glacial and interglacial conditions can be studied in sediment cores taken from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

Thorium [c]

It has been found that the measured thorium burial is in balance with its production in Arctic seawater but that, for all time intervals, the burial of protactinium is in deficit. Thus, protactinium has been exported out of the Arctic Ocean all time throughout the past 35,000 years [2]. The outflow has to have been so strong that the replacement time for deep waters in the Arctic Ocean is many centuries since the most recent glaciation. Thus, Arctic waters are a persistent contribution to the global ocean circulation throughout the end of the last glacial periode and the following warmer Holocene.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com
info@mundusmaris.org

 

[1] M. O. Jeffries, J.E: Overland and D.K. Perovich, 2013. The Arctic shifts to a new normal, Physics Today, Vol 66(10)
[2] Sharon S. Hoffmann, Jerry F. McManus, William B. Curry & L. Susan Brown-Leger, 2013, Persistent export of 231Pa from the deep central Arctic Ocean over the past 35,000 years
Nature 497, 603–606, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7451/full/nature12145.html

[a] from:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-seaicemin.html 
[b] from: http://www.arcticsystem.no/en/outsideworld/oceancurrents/
[c] from: http://www.larrymylesreports.com/thorium.htm

Keeping the heat on, or powering Europe!

 Moving on to Toronto, Florence, Vladivostok or Seattle?

Toronto, Florence, Vladivostok and Seattle are particular cities with particular surroundings. All four cities are situated about half way between the Equator and the North-pole, but what for a different climate they offer! Definitely, it's not the same choice where to live. 

Toronto Skyline
(from: http://www.intelligenthq.com/world/
top-ten-cities-to-live-and-work-in-2012/)

This four cities are situated at about the same northern latitude. Toronto in eastern Canada is facing the cold western North Atlantic Ocean.  

Florence in Europe is facing the warm eastern North Atlantic Ocean. Vladivostok in the far east of Russia is situated at the cold western shores of the Pacific Ocean, and Seattle at its  warm eastern shores.

Florence and Seattle have warm summers and temperate winters. Toronto and Vladivostok have temperate summers and really cold winters. Florence has the most clement climate, followed by Seattle, Vladivostok coming well last. 

Florence annual mean day-time temperature is 20°C, and its annual mean night-time temperature is 9°C. For Seattle the annual mean temperatures are 15°C and 7°C, respectively.  Toronto has an annual mean day-time temperature of 13°C, and its annual mean night-time temperature is 5°C. In Vladivostok the annual mean day-time and night-time temperatures are 9°C and 2°C, respectively.  

The average day in Vladivostok is as warm as the average night in Florence!

Watch your neighbouring ocean

These differences of the local climate of  Toronto, Florence, Vladivostok or  Seattle are strongly determined by the temperature of the surface waters of their neighbouring ocean. The  surface waters at northern east-coast of the North-Atlantic Ocean are much warmer than surface waters as its northern west-coast. The same pattern is found in the North-Pacific; the northern east-coast of  North Pacific is much warmer than its northern west-coast. The cross-ocean temperature difference is more pronounced in the North Atlantic Ocean than in the North Pacific Ocean. 

Florence -  Arno River
(from: http://www.saiprograms.com/news/
student-blogger-amanda-florence-fall-2012)

Lucky Europe, is heated by the currents of the North Atlantic Ocean!  Not so lucky Japan, its northern islands are cooled by the Pacific Ocean but happily Japan's southern islands are swept by the warm Kurishio. The currents of the Kurishio does for the North Pacific Ocean and North America what the Gulf Stream does for the North Atlantic and Europe; warm surface waters are pushed north-eastward across the ocean. 

Kurishio and Gulf Stream are part of a much wider pattern of  variable global currents and related fluctuating transport of heat, salt [1] and other substances.

A kind of global 'conveyor belt'  links the oceans at the top and at the bottom, with surface currents transporting warm water northward to the Arctic while cold water in the depths flows back to the tropics and around the world. But that belt operates with "stop and go", with the strength of currents varying widely from year to year, decade to decade.  

This circulation, in the North Atlantic called the 'Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation' ferries vast amounts of heat from the tropics to northern latitudes [2]. One of its main components is the Gulf Stream. But far more is happening below the surface in the depth of the ocean that determines features and variable strength of  currents and related heat transport [3]. The 'Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation' forms the part of the global  'conveyor belt' that operates in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Warm conveyor belt waters from Cape Hatteras to Murmansk

Global Conveyor Belt
(from: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/
science_and_impacts/science/abrupt-climate-change.html)

The Gulf Stream transports heat along the eastern shores of North America up to Cape Hatteras and than into the wider North Atlantic Ocean setting of as the North Atlantic Current. The warm surface water moves across the North Atlantic Ocean to Europe and up into the Greenland Sea between Norway and Greenland. There part of the warm water is cooled and sinks into the depth, and part moves further north into the Arctic Ocean keeping the very northern European ports (at 69° N) ice-free. So regular cargo-ships can sail to Kirkenes and Murmansk at latitudes where elsewhere at similar latitude only icebreakers may navigate the ocean. The warm sea heats the western winds that keep Europe's climate mild. Nowhere else in the northern hemisphere is the climate so clement at the same northern latitudes.

The North Atlantic Ocean is the powerhouse heating Europe.

Conveyor Belt in the North Atlantic Ocean
(from:http://www.sonoma.edu/users/f/freidel/
global/207lec2images.htm )

Year-to-year and longer term changes in the strength of the  'Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation' happen and likely are affecting seasonal wetter conditions across Europe, Africa and the Americas.

For example, observations from 2009 indicate that strength of the overturning circulation dropped by 30% for a year. This reduced the amount of heat transported to the North Atlantic by almost 200 trillion watts. That drop of heat transport into the North Atlantic ocean has been linked to the harsh winters in Europe 2009-10 [4]. 

The estimate drop of heat transport is only a minor part of the total heat transport around the globe by ocean currents, nevertheless  200 trillion watts  is a tremendous amount of heat. This amount of heat corresponds to about half of  the additional amount of heat that currently  is captured by the atmosphere because of the increased carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere;  increase beyond the pre-industrial values of 290 ppm currently we hit the 400 ppm [ppm = parts per million]. A fluctuating heat tarnsport of that size is important. Therefore detailed and lasting observation along transects of the entire Atlantic Ocean are planned for the next years [4].

Between Greenland and Caribbean Seas

Cape Hatteras 
(from: http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2009/04/fieldwork3.html)

A key element of the conveyor belt is found in the the Greenland Sea and the Labrador Sea. When reaching this region in the north-eastern North Atlantic Ocean the warm surface waters cool and sink; sink really deep down to the bottom of the sea [5]. In that cooling process heat is passed on to the atmosphere and carbon dioxide is carried to the depths, sequestering it from the atmosphere.  Winds move warmed air eastward into Europe.

Water in the depth is moving back towards the equator along the continental slopes of Greenland and North America. Thus a cold southward current runs in the depth of the ocean along the North American east cost. The deep current is  accompanied by cold surface waters, the Labrador current, that sweeps the shores of Canada and north-eastern states of the USA before - south of Cape Hatteras - the warm northward flowing Gulf Stream dominates the surface currents. Thus, the east-coast of North America is cooled in the north and heated in the south. However, in the depth all along  the continental slope a mighty vein of cold water runs southward, the back-loop of the 'conveyor belt' in the North Atlantic.

The cold water that was formed in European sup-polar seas moves south into the South Atlantic Ocean where waters from different sources meet, including water from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The South Atlantic Ocean has its own less vigorous overturning circulation. It is moving heat along the shores of South America from the tropics poleward linking into the mighty circumpolar current sweeping around the Antarctic continent. Likewise - as a key part of the global 'conveyor belt' -  heat is swept  by surface currents northward out of the tropical South Atlantic Ocean. Warm water flows into the western tropical North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea from where after further heating the even warmer water is shifted forward to Europe.

(from: http://www.why.is/svar.php?id=5470)
"What would happen if the North Atlantic Current
should stop or change direction?"...
 ....compare climate in Labrador and Ireland. 

The net global oceanic heat transport is into the North Atlantic where the heat is released from the ocean into the atmosphere. This heat then is swept by the winds into Europe, Northern Africa and Asia.

The relative warm surface waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, which are already enriched in salt content for example by the outflow of salty water from the Mediterranean, pass humidity to the warm atmosphere. The surface waters get saltier than surface waters of any other ocean. This high salt content is a favourable precondition for the deep-water formation in  Greenland Sea and Labrador Sea, what in turn is engine moving around the 'conveyor belt'. That engine drives the North Atlantic powerhouse for keeping Europe's climate warm and clement.

Martin.Mundusmaris@gmail.com
info@mundusmaris.org

[1] See related posts: 

• http://martinmundusmaris.blogspot.de/2013/02/change-pitch-with-pinch-of-salt.html,
• http://martinmundusmaris.blogspot.de/2012/04/giant-swirls-tiny-swirls-dancing-sea.html

[2] The similar feature does not occur in the Pacific Ocean with the same strength because the Bering Sea linking it with the Arctic Ocean is shallow and the salt content of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean is lower. However the winter freezing of Okhotsk Sea causes formation of a modest volume of deep water.

[3] McCarthy, G. et al. (2012), Observed interannual variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 26.5°N, Geophysical Research Letters: "The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) plays a critical role in the climate system and is responsible for much of the heat transported by the ocean. A mooring array, ...  provides continuous measurements of the strength and variability of this circulation. With seven full years of measurements, we now examine the interannual variability of the MOC. While earlier results highlighted substantial seasonal and shorter timescale variability,... From 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010, the annually averaged MOC strength was just 12.8 Sv[erdrup = 1.000.000 m³ / second], representing a 30% decline. This downturn persisted from early 2009 to mid-2010....  This rebalancing of the transport from the deep overturning to the upper gyre has implications for the heat transported by the Atlantic."

[4] Q. Schiermeier, Ocean under surveillance, Nature, Vol. 497 p.167-168. The article by Q. Schiermeier has motivated me to prepare this contribution for my blog "Mundus Maris... first news". 

[5] Rudels, B. Quadfasel D. (1991), Convection and deep water formation in the Arctic Ocean-Greenland Sea System, Journal of Marine Systems: "The processes of convection and deep water formation in the Nordic Seas.... The dense shelf waters sink on the continental slopes into the deep basins entraining ambient waters from the strongly stratified Arctic Ocean proper. In the European Polar Seas—the Nordic Seas—deep water is only formed in the Greenland Sea through haline convection, ...resulting in a weakly stratified water column...".