Teleidoscope

Mon, Dec 25, 2006

The Gulf Stream and Climate

Posted at 11:23 am MST to Current Events

Interesting. Investigating climate change on USENET rec.arts.sf.science (where some professional atmospheric scientists were posting).

• As of June 2005 the Gulf Stream had already been pushed as far south as Madrid in what had been predicted as the intermediate shutdown pattern.
• The North Atlantic Current is also vulnerable to thermohaline shutdown.
• According to George William Herbert, posting June 20, 2005:

  In other cheerful news, the largest former downwelling
  area in the North Atlantic, off Greenland, seems to have
  turned off as well, according to breaking field reports
  which remain unconfirmed and unpublished as of yet.

• According Keith Morrison, same date:

  Latest research is that it's an atmospheric effect caused by the
  Rockies that's the main reason for a warmer European climate. That,
  and that its on the west side of a continent in the northern
  hemisphere.
  
  So they shouldn't be too bad off until we decide to dismantle
  Colorado.

I'm sure Colorado is glad to be of service...

There is apparently some debate about whether the Gulf Stream intermediate shutdown pattern is related to the Little Ice Age climate pattern in Europe. There are worries about the effect on Indian Ocean monsoons, and the forecast for Africa is apparently "hot and dry": just what's needed in places where desertification is already advancing.

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