Scientists have discovered a hidden body of water in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean

A previously hidden body of water has been identified in the central Atlantic Ocean, providing a new perspective on ocean dynamics. Newly discovered tropical Atlantic waters form along the equator when ocean currents merge between distinct bodies of water from the north and south. Live sciences mentioned.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The researchers monitored the mixing of water along the equator in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

“It seems controversial that the equatorial water mass is present in the Pacific and Indian Oceans but is missing in the Atlantic because equatorial circulation and mixing in the three oceans have common features,” says Victor Zorbas, a physicist and oceanographer at the Shirshov Institute of Physics. oceanographer in Moscow, he told Live Science. “The new identified water mass allowed us to complete (or at least describe more accurately) the phenotype of the basic water masses in the World Ocean.”

The vast expanse of the oceans is not a unified body of water, but rather a dynamic fabric of interconnected masses and layers, constantly mixing and separating under the influence of currents, eddies, and fluctuations in temperature and salinity.

These distinct components, known as water masses, bear the imprint of their origins and share unique physical properties, such as the density and isotopic distribution of oxygen, nitrates and phosphates.

To characterize these water masses, oceanographers map the interaction between temperature and salinity across the ocean, two critical parameters that govern the density of seawater.

To find the missing body of water, the scientist combed through data collected by the Argo program, an international group of robots and self-submerging buoys spread across the world’s oceans.

The researchers analyzed the data and observed an unobserved temperature and salinity curve parallel to the curves that define the waters of the North Atlantic and the central South Atlantic to the north and south: tropical Atlantic waters, media reported.

“It was easy to confuse tropical Atlantic waters with the central waters of the South Atlantic, and in order to distinguish between them it was necessary to have a fairly dense network of vertical temperatures and salinities covering the entire Atlantic Ocean,” Zorbas said.