Atlantic Conveyer RAPID Programme

"Finding a reliable and cost-effective way to monitor the Atlantic heat conveyor is a primary aim of the RAPID programme. The team of Prof. Harry Bryden and Dr. Stuart Cunningham of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton are tackling this problem in their RAPID project 'Monitoring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 25°N'.

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/rapid/sis/moc_monitor.php

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/rapid/sis/moc_monitor.php#media

In December 2005 a paper was published in Nature 438, 655-657
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7068/full/nature04385.html
Nature 438, 655-657 (1 December 2005) doi:10.1038/nature04385
Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25° N
Harry L. Bryden et al.


However Science now reports a contrary view

Science 17 November 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5802, p. 1064
DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5802.1064a

News of the Week
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE:
False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All
Richard A. Kerr

"A closer look at the Atlantic Ocean's currents has confirmed what many oceanographers suspected all along: There's no sign that the ocean's heat-laden "conveyor" is slowing."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5802/1064a

"The first year of RAPID array observations has now been analyzed, and the next European ice age looks to be a ways off. At a RAPID conference late last month in Birmingham, U.K., Bryden reported on the first continuous gauging of conveyor flow. Variations up and down within 1 year are as large as the changes seen from one snapshot to the next during the past few decades, he found. "He observed a lot of variability," says oceanographer Martin Visbeck of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science at the University of Kiel in Germany, who attended the meeting; so much variability that "more than 95% of the scientists at the workshop concluded that we have not seen any significant change of the Atlantic circulation to date," wrote Visbeck in a letter to the British newspaper the Guardian. [Monday, 30th October 2006]"

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1934904,00.html