New AI Technology Reveals Details About Ocean Currents
Using AI technology, researchers have been able to track ocean currents that were previously hidden and that reveal movements that shape the Earth’s climate.
Text: Lena Scherman
The researchers have used an AI-driven method called GOFLOW that utilizes weather satellites to create maps of ocean currents. The result is imagery of the small, fast-moving currents that have previously been impossible to observe. And these are the very key to understanding the climate, marine ecosystems, and how carbon sequestration works.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed the method, and by using satellites already in orbit around the Earth, the method is both powerful and cost-effective. The images they have produced are outstanding.
Ocean currents are important for the climate
Ocean currents are vital for life on our planet. Not only for the heat they transport around the globe, but also for the carbon they transfer between the atmosphere and the deep ocean, and the nutrients they circulate throughout the sea, benefiting all marine ecosystems.
Despite their enormous benefit to all life on the planet, it has so far been difficult to measure more precisely how and where they flow in the world’s oceans.
Read more here about how the researchers made their discoveries and what challenges lie ahead.
Cover image: The Gulf Stream is characterized by an intricate network of temperature gradient structures that point to complex underlying current dynamics. Observations from the GOES-East satellite, combined with machine learning, have for the first time linked this observed structure to the much more difficult task of observing ocean currents. Image: Luc Lenain/Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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GOFLOW (Geostationary Ocean Flow) is a method that allows researchers to map ocean currents with a much higher level of detail than was previously possible.
The research was led by Luc Lenain from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Kaushik Srinivasan, a former Scripps student who now works at UCLA. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience. Co-authors Roy Barkan from Tel Aviv University and Nick Pizzo from the University of Rhode Island were also trained at Scripps.
