655222 external_news 1643995971 1643995971 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."

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