Learning about the surfaces of celestial bodies gets more exciting as the technology to get data from these bodies improves. There are an infinite amount of questions that still hang in space outside our atmosphere, but there are an equal amount of questions within it. One of these questions, or many of them, deal with climate change and the change in the ocean currents.

Until recently, measurements in the ocean current changes were made by getting an estimate of the amount of water flowing north and south in the Atlantic using a network of buoys. Now NASA can observe the pressure changes in the flow of Atlantic currents using the dual satellite system GRACE. NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment can measure the changes in the Earth's gravitational field. This is done by measuring the mass below the satellite. Through tons of data processing the important numbers were found and the pressure underneath the surface of the oceans was found and the changes indicated the flow of water in the currents along the Atlantic. A measurement of the meridional transport can be found by finding the differences in zonal pressures.

 

Below is an early concept of what data taken by GRACE might look like.


The article provided by nasa.gov has more information as does the prepublication of the paper behind the new research method.