Russian scientists from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Zubov State Oceanographic Institute, with the participation of their colleagues from the Italian Institute of Marine Sciences, revealed how the Vima fault zone was formed in the Atlantic Ocean. socialbites.ca was informed about this by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), which supported this research.
The Vima fault extends from the coast of Sierra Leone in Africa to the Caribbean. This structure serves as the main transportation route for Antarctica’s bottom waters to the eastern Atlantic. Every second, more water is pumped from the fault into the ocean than all the rivers in the world deliver simultaneously.
Experts have established that the characteristic channels on the fault appeared in the Pleistocene (2.5 million – 11.7 thousand years ago) due to currents from Antarctica. These processes, which lasted thousands of years, also created a characteristic relief reminiscent of dunes in the desert.
To understand how the discovered system was formed, the authors of the scientific study examined the speeds and directions of bottom currents in the Vima fault. To do this, scientists performed numerical modeling and validated their results with direct measurement data. Acoustic flow velocity meters were lowered from the research ship via a cable from the surface to the bottom. It is difficult to estimate the exact age of the system at this time; this is a task for future work.
“Our study allows us to reconsider our understanding of how sediment accumulates on the ocean floor in the Vima Fracture Valley. We show that bottom currents from Antarctica play no less, and perhaps greater, role in sedimentation here than underwater landslides from the slopes of South America “Although this research is focused on the past, it offers the opportunity to better understand and make predictions about current ocean processes. In the future, we plan to study columns (cores) of bottom sediments from discovered drifts (sedimentary ridges). This will allow us to more accurately estimate the age of the system.” and will make it possible to obtain information on how the properties and rate of movement of Antarctic bottom water in this region changed in response to climate changes in the Pleistocene.” Paleo-Oceanology Laboratory of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences told socialbites.ca.
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Source: Gazeta
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