A key "belt" around Antarctica is changing.

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Scientists say that a key ocean current is speeding up, a trend that could have profound impacts on the rest of the planet.

An international team of researchers used decades’ worth of data from satellites and a global network of ocean floats to determine that as the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is growing warmer, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is flowing faster.

“From both observations and models, we find that the ocean heat change is causing the significant ocean current acceleration detected during recent decades,” said Jia-Rui Shi, a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The team, which consists of researchers from Woods Hole, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and UC Riverside, published their findings Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The ACC is notable because it is the only ocean current that circumnavigates the entire planet. It acts as something of a barrier between warmer subtropical water in the northern part of the Southern Ocean and cold water nearer to Antarctica. The warmer section is also important because it sucks up an outsized amount of heat from human activities that would otherwise contribute to global warming in the atmosphere.

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Another study released earlier this year looked at variations in the current over the past 140,000 years. It found that an increase in the speed of the current could decrease the Southern Ocean’s capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide, which could intensify climate change as a result.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that the current helps Antarctica remain cold and frozen, which is key to keeping our seas from rising to levels that could spell catastrophe for coastal regions.

The co-authors of the new study believe the speed of the current will continue to increase as the Southern Ocean absorbs more heat from human activity.