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07/14/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/14/2026 12:51

Scientists Unravel the Fast-Moving ‘Butterfly Effect’ of the Deep Ocean

Published Date

July 14, 2026

Article Content

Tiny, invisible swirls and twirls - not much bigger than a coin - deep below the ocean's surface are silently shaping some of the biggest forces steering our climate: sea-level rise, fisheries collapse, extreme flooding, and how much carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs.

An international research team including scientists from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that deep ocean turbulence - the process that distributes heat, nutrients and carbon from the surface to the seafloor and back - affects our lives not on a scale of thousands of years as was previously thought, but within the span of a human lifetime.

The tools used to predict these effects and inform policy, however, do not adequately represent this turbulence, or the speed at which it moves. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

"The community is increasingly recognizing the role of ocean mixing and turbulence on many scales," said Scripps physical oceanographer Matthew Alford, a study co-author.

The findings come at a time when global ocean research of this kind is at risk. In May, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced the dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368 million ocean observation network that provides vital oceanographic data worldwide, although the plans were later partially canceled.

Changing turbulence patterns could affect our climate in tangible ways, which is why this type of ocean monitoring is key: if nutrients are not being pulled from the deep ocean to the surface, it could cause marine food chains to break down, which would in turn cause fisheries to collapse. The way that heat is transferred from the deep ocean to shallower waters and back affects how Arctic and Antarctic ice melts, which affects sea-level rise, storm intensity and flooding levels.

Using a combination of previously collected physical and chemical measurements, the researchers identified several fast-moving climatic processes affected by small-scale turbulence, including the distribution of heat, nutrients and carbon. When compared with how climate models predict how turbulence in the deep ocean will affect life on land, the researchers found these models require significant improvements.

"Some of the shorter timescales of the interactions demonstrated in this paper are initially surprising but are expected since the equations of motion are so nonlinear," Alford said. "This paper demonstrates the power of theorists, modelers and observers working together closely to identify and better understand the most important of these feedbacks."

One of the tracers the researchers used to test the accuracy of climate models was CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) concentration. CFCs were released into the atmosphere in large quantities before being banned in the 1980s under the Montreal Protocol, due to the damage they caused to the ozone layer.

The researchers tracked how far and how fast CFCs have travelled over the past six decades by measuring their concentration at depth. They found some deep waters have carried CFCs all the way from Antarctica to the mid-Pacific and north Indian Ocean in just 40 years. The same waters also carry carbon, oxygen and heat. As they travel, they mix with other waters, and so turbulence is key to how much tracers, heat and carbon remain trapped in the deep ocean and on what time scales.

"We're learning that the deep ocean can exchange carbon, nutrients, heat and pollutants with the atmosphere on timescales relevant to our own lives," said co-author Ali Mashayek of the University of Cambridge.

The research was supported in part by Schmidt Sciences LLC, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Read the story in Nature Communications: "Climatic Reach of Small-Scale Turbulence in the Ocean Interior."

- Adapted from Cambridge University

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