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Science 8 November 2002:
Vol. 298. no. 5596, pp. 1179 - 1181
DOI: 10.1126/science.1079329
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Perspectives

OCEANOGRAPHY:
What Is the Thermohaline Circulation?

Carl Wunsch

The term "thermohaline circulation" is widely used in the context of past and future climate change. In his Perspective, Wunsch argues that there are many different, and inconsistent, definitions for this term. He defines ocean circulation in terms of mass fluxes, which are largely driven by surface forces such as wind and tides, and argues that thermohaline circulation should only refer to the separate transport of heat and salinity in the ocean.

The author is in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 01239, USA. E-mail: cwunsch{at}mit.edu

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