Equatorial Undercurrent Mixing Project
The equatorial Pacific drives Earth’s largest natural year-to-year climate cycle in El Niño and La Niña. There is evidence (Cane 1998) that the same dynamic drives ice age cycles. A particular “Equatorially Symmetric La Niña” mode may be the Earth’s mechanism of global cooling. ESLN emerged in 1998 following intense internal tide resonance in 1997 and early 1998.
The Equatorial Undercurrent Mixing Project aims to leverage this natural mechanism of global cooling. The proposed mechanism harnesses kinetic energy in the Equatorial Undercurrent to develop internal waves similar to the natural internal tide waves observed in early 1998.
Project background:
1. Internal Tide Resonance in El Niño Amplification, Duke & Werntz 2025 submssion to Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans. This paper shows the response of the equatorial Pacific to a 0.02 J/kg increase in 125-day average gravitational tidal potential in 1997 and 2015, the record El Niño years. The system’s apparent sensitivity to minute differences in tidal energy input supports the practicality of this idea.
2. 1. December 2024 AGU abstract: Geoengineering Proposal to Leverage Earth’s Natural Cooling Mechanism. Poster
4. 2011 World Climate Research Program conference poster presents the hypothesis that tidal forcing is the common mechanism of global cooling in interannual, millennial, and orbital time scales: DUKE POSTER 2011 WCRP conference
5. Do periodic consolidations of Pacific countercurrents trigger global cooling by equatorially symmetric La Niña? Climate of the Past Discussions, 6, 905-961, 2010
6. 2009 Geoengineering proposal to leverage Earth’s natural cooling mechanisms
7. 2008 EGU abstract: A proposal to force vertical mixing of the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent to create a system of equatorially trapped coupled convection that counteracts global warming
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