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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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While climate change is making much of the world warmer, temperatures in a subpolar region of the North Atlantic are getting cooler. A team of researchers report that changes in the wind pattern, among other factors, may be contributing to this "cold blob." The researchers' findings run counter to some past studies that have suggested that the cold blob is evidence of a slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation—or AMOC—a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic. "Our work is further demonstration that sea surface temperatures in the subpolar North Atlantic are not easily explained by a single mechanism," says study co-author Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Instead, we expect both atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, and their interaction, to drive variability in the sea surface temperatures in this climatically important region."
