The 'salty blob' in the deep ocean that once controlled Earth’s climate

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🗞️ Driving the news: New research reveals that a vast body of salty deep-ocean water — dubbed a “salty blob” — once played a decisive role in regulating Earth’s climate by trapping carbon dioxide, helping to keep the planet cooler during the last ice age.

🔭 The context: How ocean salt shaped past climate shifts
• The deep ocean is layered by temperature and salinity, with saltier water sinking and limiting vertical mixing
• During the last ice age, slow ocean circulation allowed deep waters to store large amounts of carbon dioxide
• Evidence shows deep-ocean salt rose toward the surface around 18,000 years ago, weakening the barrier that trapped carbon and accelerating warming

🌍 Why it matters for people and the planet: The ocean’s hidden climate role
• The release of stored CO₂ from deep waters helped drive the transition out of the last ice age
• The Southern Ocean is one of the few regions where deep water resurfaces, making it a critical climate regulator
• Today’s oceans absorb roughly a third of human-made carbon emissions, slowing warming but not indefinitely
• As modern oceans warm and stratification changes, their long-term capacity to store carbon may decline

⏭️ What’s next: Lessons for today’s climate system
• Scientists are refining models to better capture how deep-ocean salinity affects carbon storage
• Understanding ancient ocean circulation could improve predictions of future climate feedbacks
• The findings reinforce that climate regulation depends not only on the atmosphere, but also on deep, slow-moving ocean processes

📈 One stat: During the last ice age, global temperatures were more than 5°C lower than today, partly because the deep ocean trapped far more carbon dioxide

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