The ocean surface may look turbulent and chaotic but the lower levels can be surprisingly well ordered. Research from the University of Toronto sheds light on the decades-old mystery of thermohaline staircases: the way the ocean in some places is structured into distinct layers, each tens of metres deep, each with sharply defined temperature and salinity.
Oceanographers call these staircases striking and spectacular. The liquid equivalent of towering rock formations, they can be several hundred metres high but nobody could fully explain how they form.
