Klimatema
Ocean
The ocean is a vital component of Earth's climate system, acting as a massive heat reservoir that regulates global temperatures and weather patterns. It plays a central role in the carbon cycle by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus mitigating the effects of climate change. Understanding the ocean's processes and its interaction with the atmosphere, land, and ice is crucial for predicting climate shifts and informing sustainable environmental policies.
Oceanography, the scientific study of the oceans, provides essential insights into the dynamics of ocean currents and the impacts of human activity on marine environments. Through cutting-edge science, researchers at the Bjerknes Center are advancing our knowledge of how oceans influence climate systems, from seasonal weather variations to long-term climate trends. This research is an important part of developing solutions to the challenges posed by a changing climate.
Oppdatert 10. April 2025
Did you know?
The Gulf Stream's heat transport into the Norwegian Sea corresponds to approximately 50 times the world's total energy consumption!
The Gulf Stream can be reduced by up to 30 % over the next 100 years. The climate in Europe will nevertheless be warmer.
Maching Learning in Ocean Observations
The world’s oceans take up twenty five percent of our annual CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. This helps slow down global warming. Keeping track of this uptake is essential for understanding climate change. We have millions of verified data points. These are published as the surface ocean CO2 atlas, SOCAT. But, for every year, only a fraction of the vast global ocean is surveyed.
How do we go from these spotty measurements to an estimate of the carbon uptake of the full ocean? The clue is neural networks and artifical intelligence.
Animated and edited by Eli Kristin Muriaas.
AMOC and the Ocean Currents
The Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream is a concentrated band of warm water flowing northward off the east coast of North America. It continues across the Atlantic toward Europe as the North Atlantic Current. The current splits into separate branches at several stages. The branch that continues northward through the Norwegian Sea is called the Norwegian Current.
Animation: Eli Muriaas / Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
North Atlantic overturning circulation (AMOC)
From the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida, the wind drives the water northward and eastward toward Europe in the Atlantic Current, before steering it into the Nordic Seas and the Norwegian Current. In these northern regions the water cools, sinks and flows back south as a deep ocean current. Both the wind and the sinking contribute to driving the large-scale circulation in the North Atlantic.
Animation: Eli Muriaas / Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
Revisiting Ocean Acidification
By taking up CO2, the oceans slow down the pace of climate change. But this invaluable service of the oceans comes at a cost. Are Olsen, Nadine Goris, Siv Kari Lauvset and Ingunn Skjelvan are revisiting the problem of ocean acidification in a new Foresight Brief published by the UN Environment.
Is the AMOC Going to Collapse?
In this episode of the Bjerknes Podcast, experts debate the future of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a crucial component of the global climate system. Listen to colleagues discussing the AMOC in a measured and thoughtful manner.
There is an ongoing debate among scientists regarding the potential collapse or slowdown of the AMOC. Both scientific support and contrasting views can be found among colleagues at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. In this new episode of the Bjerknes Climate Podcast, host Stephen Outten discusses these two viewpoints with Andreas Born and Marius Årthun.
Pacific islands in a rising ocean
In Bergen mid-March, the climate festival Varmere, våtere, villere (Warmer, wetter, wilder) filled three floors in Bergen over three days, for talks and debates on climate change and necessary solutions.
Vandhna Kumar, postdoctoral fellow at the Geophysical Institute (GFI) and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate research, is from Fiji, and works in the OceanStates project at the University of Bergen.
At the festival she was in the "Around the World with Climate Science" to talk about her experiences from climate change in Fiji, and motivated her to become a climate scientist. She joins host Ingjald Pilskot in the festival podcast booth.