Fresh news from the Atlantic The Atlantic overturning circulation plays a key role in large-scale climate but how it varies is not well known. Now a study proposes that the weakening it may have experienced in the late 1970s is unprecedented over the last millennium.

he Atlantic Ocean is the stage for one of the greatest oceanographic characters: the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This large-scale oceanic circulation links the surface and deep ocean through convection processes occurring in the North Atlantic. It brings warm waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where they cool, sink and return southwards at depth