Australian scientists have identified one of the last missing links which shows how the world ocean system is interconnected in governing global climate.
New research shows that a current sweeping past Australia's southern island of Tasmania toward the South Atlantic is a previously undetected part of the world climate system's engine-room, said scientist Ken Ridgeway of the government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
The Southern Ocean, which swirls around the Antarctic, has been identified in recent years as the main lung of global climate, absorbing a third of all carbon dioxide taken in by the world ocean system.
"We knew that they (deep ocean pathway currents) could move from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean through Indonesia. Now we can see that they move south of Tasmania as well, another important link," Ridgeway told Reuters.
In each ocean, water flows around anticlockwise pathways, or gyres the size of ocean basins.
The newly discovered Tasman Outflow, which sweeps past Tasmania at an average depth of 800-1,000 meters, is classed as a "supergyre" that links the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic southern hemisphere ocean basins, CSIRO said in a statement on Wednesday.