26 February 2007
Thermohaline Circulation Shutdown!?!?
In our reading for Wednesday, the authors mention that " the most dramatic- although unlikely- effect of global warming would be a change in the circulation patterns of water in the Atlantic Ocean" (224). The change in circulation these authors are referring to would be a slowing of the Gulf Stream, resulting in a decrease of warm water transport to northern latitudes. Obviously, they seem to think- as did the majority of the scientific community by 2006- that this is very unlikely. However, in the spring of 2004 NOAA reported satellite data that supported the opposite as did two other studies in 2005, which found warm water circulation to northern latitudes to be 30% of 1992 fluxes. Interestingly, I could not find any explanations by the scientific community (2006 and later) that explained the 2004-2005 cooling results and explain why they were not a trend that could be extended into the future. Therefore, I am not sure what to believe!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
To go a little more in-depth to what Liz was explaining with how ocean circulation will be effected due to global warming. The changes would be a result of freshwater melting from the glacier and flowing into the North Atlantic Ocean. This will affect the salinity of the water and make the water less dense and not sink. Therefore, the deep water circulation will be discontinued which will affect atmospheric cirulation. According to an article from National Geographic news, if NADW was stopped Northern Europe would become cool and the rest of the world's climate would warm. One other interesting fact from the article is the the authors state if NADW is shut down, then global warming would be enhanced. This would be due to the oceans inability to uptake CO2, which means more CO2 emissions would remain in the air and trap heat.
I think that it is amazing to see how everything is related to each other and how a change in one area can have a major global effect.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1212_021213_arcticrivers_2.html
Liz, this is a fascinating post!
To find out what's happened since then, we need the Science article reference. Then, you can search for all articles that have referenced the Science article (and perhaps commented further on it) by searching in SciFinder Scholar (downloadable from the Copley library website).
Post a Comment