Meridional Ocean Heat Transport

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The rate at which the ocean carries heat across a line of latitude, measured in petawatts. At 26°N in the Atlantic the RAPID array has measured it since 2004 at roughly 1.25 PW, with a reported reduction from about 1.32 PW before 2009 to about 1.15 PW in the years after. This is the quantity that carries the popular claim about the Gulf Stream and European climate — and it is also the quantity that shows why the claim is more complicated than it sounds, because the atmosphere transports heat poleward as well, and the seasonal storage and release of heat by the ocean surface is a separate mechanism from heat carried by currents.

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