Posted on 05/08/2005 8:21:59 AM PDT by velyrorenry
CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.
They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.
The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.
Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon.
Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to take measurements across the Greenland Sea.
“Until recently we would find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared,” he said.
“As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe.”
Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation’s power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.
Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction.
Wadhams’s submarine journeys took him under the North Polar ice cap, using sonar to survey the ice from underneath. He has measured how the ice has become 46% thinner over the past 20 years. The results from these surveys prompted him to focus on a feature called the Odden ice shelf, which should grow out into the Greenland Sea every winter and recede in summer.
The growth of this shelf should trigger the annual formation of the sinking water columns. As sea water freezes to form the shelf, the ice crystals expel their salt into the surrounding water, making it heavier than the water below.
However, the Odden ice shelf has stopped forming. It last appeared in full in 1997. “In the past we could see nine to 12 giant columns forming under the shelf each year. In our latest cruise, we found only two and they were so weak that the sinking water could not reach the seabed,” said Wadhams, who disclosed the findings at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.
The exact effect of such changes is hard to predict because currents and weather systems take years to respond and because there are two other areas around the north Atlantic where water sinks, helping to maintain circulation. Less is known about how climate change is affecting these.
However, Wadhams suggests the effect could be dramatic. “One of the frightening things in the film The Day After Tomorrow showed how the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is upset because the sinking of cold water in the north Atlantic suddenly stops,” he said.
“The sinking is stopping, albeit much more slowly than in the film — over years rather than a few days. If it continues, the effect will be to cool the climate of northern Europe.”
One possibility is that Europe will freeze; another is that the slowing of the Gulf Stream may keep Europe cool as global warming heats the rest of the world — but with more extremes of weather.
The sky is falling!
C. Little
"It is folly to think that we control the climate. Never have, never will."
As the MSM loses its mind control over more Americans, we will see a lot of Americans waking up to your comment above.
We have had Global Warming and Cooling since the last ice age, thousands of years before I bought my OJ Simpson Bronco.
Source for this claim?
SUVs did not cause those glaciers to retreat and leave us with a gorgeous park.
I don't even know whether the earth is warming or cooling right now, but it doesn't matter. It's always doing one or the other. It doesn't stay the same.
it would be easy to verify.
1) Identify the heat trapping gasses
2) Compare the percentages now with before those before the Industrial Revolution for example.
No need for spin, numbers are numbers.
"It wasn't all that long ago that the Yosemite Valley was carved by massive glaciers. 15,000 years.
SUVs did not cause those glaciers to retreat and leave us with a gorgeous park."
Actually, we evil conservatives who drive SUVs used our time machines to go back over 15,000 years ago to cause Global Warming. As some of the enviral whackos on this thread have noted, the evidence is solid that we caused this with our SUVs. According to them, their science is good, and due to Global Warming, the UK will turn in a frozen tundra.
"I don't even know whether the earth is warming or cooling right now, but it doesn't matter. It's always doing one or the other. It doesn't stay the same."
Regardless of what the earth is doing, cooling off or heating up. It is Bush's fault, ours and Halliburton's.
On Boxing Day 250 years ago Londoners awoke astonished to find the Thames frozen over. Huge ice floes had jammed under the 25 narrow arches of old London Bridge on the ebb tide, and a severe frost had then locked the ice firmly together for miles. A remarkable fair was established on the ice and was to last for nine weeks.
City-dwellers were suddenly released from their cramped streets by the frozen river, which created an open vista in the capital. Regardless of the thickness of the ice, varying from 18ft to only 12in, a cheery devil-may-care attitude spread, and tens of thousands flocked on to the frozen river. Country squires travelled from afar to see the astonishing spectacle. Along parts of the river, mountains of ice resembled the face of a stone quarry.
A street of brightly coloured booths and tents, which grew in number each week, was soon constructed. Fairground attractions included swings, merry-go-rounds and puppet-shows. Ladies played skittles, and gentlemen the fashionable game of bowls. While cheering supporters warmed their hands with baked potatoes, teams of apprentices risked breaking legs at hockey and football. There were donkey, horse and wagon races. Coaches crunched over the ice between Blackfriars and Westminster.
See more http://www.dialogselect.com/intranet/samples/NewsUK.html
I swear, I haven't touched the themostat!
I can't decide whether I'm responsible for global warming or not. My primary vehicle is a Chevy truck, and I don't think pickups are lumped in with SUVs even though if it had a roof over the bed and a couple more seats, it'd be called a Suburban.
Actually most pickups without a camper shell get lower mileage than the SUV version with the same engine and transmission.
The tailgate is the culprit. Nothing like a 4-5' wide and 2' high wind blocker going down the road to whack your mileage.
Dang, I thought it was a NASCAR spoiler.
It is a spoiler re gas mileage.
Doesn't some American car maker have a pickup out with a spoiler in the rear?
We're doomed - but the European Islamic countries will die first, but not neccessarily because we're all driving SUVs!
How the hell these people maintain any credibility is beyond me.
Hmm. Might the gulf stream scenario's equivalent in the Pacific, the Japanese current, do the same? We here in Alaska will be first to find out. We are direct recipients of the Japanese current as the Brits are of the gulf stream.
There's the problem, right there.They never had this problem when they were still using the term Centigrade.
More telling is the fact that some of the retreating glaciers and snowpack (though not in Yosemite) are exposing the remnants of civilizations that were originally buried under them. I'm sure those people back then had a different perspective on all this.
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