HOST: Greetings, caring viewers, to today’s episode of Planet Earth: Our Loving Home, the first of a two-part series, focusing on the deep interconnection between our oceans and the world’s climate.

The experts featured today are Dr. Steve Rintoul, an oceanographer from Australia’s national scientific research body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and Professor Anders Levermann, a senior researcher at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research in Germany and the lead author of the Sea Level Change chapter for the coming 5th Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface, contain approximately 97 % of the world’s water,  sustain a diverse array of sea life and play a vital role in regulating our planet’s climate in a multitude of ways – including through thermohaline circulation, also known as the Great Ocean Conveyor.

Dr Rintoul (m): If you think about the globe and what this overturning circulation really looks like, it’s probably easiest to start in the northern part of the Atlantic (Ocean) up near Greenland and Iceland.

Water sinks at the surface there and flows southward through the whole Atlantic basin, until it reaches the Southern Ocean. And then very strong currents  in the Southern Ocean redistribute that water, (and) carry it around the globe, spinning around Antarctica.

That water then passes through the Indian and Pacific Oceans, ultimately returns to the Southern Ocean and gradually warms and becomes lighter again. And then (it) flows back in, northward through the Atlantic Basin in the upper part of the ocean, and that closes the loop.

For more details on the scientists featured on today’s program,
please visit the following websites:
Professor Anders Levermann
www.PIK-Potsdam.de
Dr. Steven Rintoul   
www.CSIRO.au