Chinese scientists found giant ‘chimneys’ in deep water that could alter submarine warfare

Chinese researchers from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have mapped massive underwater conduits they call “inertial chimneys.” According to the South China Morning Post and Reuters Business via SCMP, these structures show how energy from surface wind surges thousands of metres into the seabed, linking the sea-surface wind field, the upper ocean, and the deep-ocean sea floor into a continuous energy pathway.

The findings, which indicate the deep sea is not a stagnant body of water, were published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers in October.

The discovery was based on two years of data collected from a US-funded grid of 46 sea floor monitoring stations. This array was spread across a 600km by 600km area in the Kuroshio Extension region off the east coast of Japan. The stations, which were deployed from 2004 to 2006, utilized inverted echo sounders equipped with near-bottom pressure and current sensors to record bottom pressure, near-bottom currents, and the vertical acoustic travel time of a round trip from the sea floor to the surface.

Reuters Business via SCMP reports that the study, combined with future long-term underwater monitoring, can provide underwater acoustic environmental support for marine communication and detection.

Brief written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post, Reuters Business via SCMP — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.