Expedition 361
Mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Professor Ian Hall leads an expedition to study the impact of one of the world’s strongest ocean currents on global climate change
An international team of researchers have taken part in an expedition to study Southern African Climates. Using the JOIDES Resolution, the research cruise visited drill sites in the Indian Ocean to study one of the Earth’s strongest ocean currents, the Agulhas Current, and its influence on the global climate over the past five million years.
Aims
Professor Hall and his team from the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 361 (which includes Professor Stephen Barker and Dr Margit Simon) are seeking evidence to explain the driving role of the Agulhas Current in past climate change, and how similar changes may affect the world we live in today.
The sediment cores collected will provide a window into the past of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and allow the team to investigate how warm and salty Agulhas water has leaked between the two.
By examining these sediment cores closer, we expect to find evidence of how the Agulhas current has influenced the regional and global climate over much longer timescales, and therefore detail how connections within the climate system work. This has implications for understanding how the future climate system may operate in a warming world.
The Agulhas Current, which is hundreds of kilometres wide and a few thousand meters deep, transports vast amounts of warm, salty water from the Indian Ocean southwards to the tip of South Africa.
Whilst most of the water flow curls around to stay in the Indian Ocean, some of the water leaks into the Atlantic Ocean in massive swirls, known as Agulhas rings. This warm, salty water can make its way into the North Atlantic via the Gulf Stream, where it eventually cools and sinks, transporting more water northward and maintaining the global conveyer belt of ocean currents in a process that is known to influence northwest European and global climate change.
Professor Hall said: "We already have tantalizing evidence from sediment cores that suggests that leakage from the Agulhas Current, causing warm salty water to be exchanged between the Indian and Atlantic Ocean, has been involved in large global climate swings over the past 100,000 years, including the drastic global warming after the last ice age".
Understanding early human cultures
In what is an intriguing twist to the expedition, the research team will also be exploring the possible role that the Agulhas Current, and climate change, played in the evolution of early modern human culture.
In South Africa, archeological discoveries in caves paint a remarkable picture of some of the earliest evidence of the evolution of modern human culture. These advanced Middle Stone Age cultures show an early flourishing of the human mind between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago. Our previous studies of the Agulhas Current have provided background evidence that suggests that some of these large global climate swings, influenced by the Agulhas Current, may have played a key role in the development of these early human cultures.
