Boaty McBoatface Gets Its First Important Discovery

In 2016 the Natural Environment Research Council ask internet users to pick a name for their new research ship. But when the name Boaty McBoatface won it was decided it would be better suited for one of the autonomous submarines.

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On Tuesday the 18th of June the results of the first expedition Boaty McBoatface went on were published in the PNAS journal and they are certainly interesting.
In April of 2017 Boaty was was exploring the floor of the Southern Ocean for three days. It crossed 180 kilometers in that time while it monitored the saltiness and temperature of the water. But it also monitored the occurrence of turbulence.

Thanks to the data collected by Boaty McBoatface and the RRS James Clark Ross the scientists were able to identify a so far unknown mechanism that allows the winds above the Southern ocean to increase the amount of turbulence. Consequently the warm water in middle depths mixes with the cold water in abysses making the water near the seafloor warmer and the water level rises.

These winds have increased in power in the past decades and one of the main reasons for this is the damage to the ozone layer above Antarctica. As Alberto Naveira Garabato from the University of Southampton said: “Our study is an important step in understanding how the climate change happening in the remote and inhospitable Antarctic waters will impact the warming of the oceans as a whole and future sea level rise.”

Sources:

• https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/17/1904087116
• https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2019/06/boaty-mcboatface-mission.page

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