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The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. More commonly known as the Gulf Stream to everyone not attempting to dazzle peer review editors with Bull$tuff. The primary driver of the Gulf Stream is salinity in the North Atlantic; the higher the saline content, the further north the Gulf Stream will drive before the salty, warm water from the Caribbean Sea drops to the bottom of the ocean. This happens in an area called the North Atlantic Sink. Freshwater outputs from rivers in Europe and Canada, along with glacial melts, dilute the waters in the North Atlantic, meaning that the water from the Caribbean is saltier and heavier than the waters in the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream is balanced by an undercurrent at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean that returns the cold water back to the Caribbean Sea. This circulation is slowing.
This circulation moderates the climate of Western and Northern Europe. London, England, for example, is at the same latitude as Calgary, AB, Canada (North of Toronto). Yet Calgary gets snow (normally) and London gets rain. Lots and lots of rain. But imagine that rain is a few degrees cooler, and it's now snow. How would the UK manage, or Ireland and Western Europe?
Maybe an ice age is too strong of a prediction. But it would result in a sudden massive disruption to our normal weather patterns. Climate hysteria? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Discussion (17)
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My sister is an oceanographer at Woods Hole. She's brilliant. She spent quite some time studying the Gulf Stream.
She said there are several ways to identify it. The water in Gulf Stream is a different temperature than the surrounding ocean, so you can trace it using satellite thermal imaging. It is also about 3 feet higher than the surrounding ocean - sort of a big moving pile of water, if you can imagine. So you can trace the elevation changes. It also has different types of fish, different types of algae, and all sorts of other qualities that you can trace out on a map.
The problem is that all those lines are in different places. So we don't really know what the Gulf Stream is, at this point.
These currents have been around for billions of years, but we only have about 40 years worth of satellite data. So we're not sure how much variability is normal.
We have no idea how all this works. Yet leftists say "The science is settled."
Right.
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Yep. The only thing settled is that I must give up my SUV and live in a yurt. Ocean flows are bigger mystery than air flows (especially in 3 dimensions) and define climate.
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Benjamin Franklin Was the First to Chart the Gulf Stream | Smithsonian
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They'd manage the situation using the same proven techniques they apply today to control anthropogenic global warming. They'd harness their subject population to make the appropriate sacrifices to the mother goddess, and all would be well. I don't know why this is controversial - it's been the way of the elite since the Inca and Maya cultures.
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This, along with a sudden release of methane trapped in clathrates on the north Atlantic ocean bottom, is one of the potential tipping-point scenarios most often cited by climate alarmists.
While I don't trust reporting on climate science, the mechanism by which the AMOC might slow seems pretty straightforward and plausible. I'm generally skeptical about climate alarmism, and think we're probably better off with a somewhat warmer, wetter, more CO2-rich world anyway, but I have to admit that it would be unfortunate to watch Europe enter another mini-ice age any time soon.
Still...
All that warmth has to go somewhere, and part of it will creep up the eastern coast of the United States, even warming the area up near where I live. And the wind chill is 6° out there right now.
So, you know. Every cloud and all that.
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