An upper layer of Atlantic water flows eastward into the sea over a lower layer of saltier and heavier Mediterranean water flowing westward into the ocean, known as the Mediterranean Outflow water.

A huge stretch of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly turning into the Atlantic. ... “This region is shifting to the Atlantic climate, and it’s going fast,” Lind said. Advertisement.

The model reproduces the propagation of a subduction zone from a closing ocean – in this case, the Mediterranean – through a narrow oceanic corridor into a new opening ocean, the Atlantic.