Melting Arctic ice will mean chillier Britain: Scientists predict end of Gulf Stream

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Warming in the Arctic could be about to "turn off" the Gulf stream - which brings tropical heat to British shores - with catastrophic consequences for the climate of northern Europe in the long term, scientists warned yesterday. Peter Wadhams, of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said that for the fifth winter in the last seven years, a huge tongue of shelf ice had failed to form in the Greenland sea. Arctic ice is both thinning and dwindling.

The loss of ice in the Arctic could have dramatic knock-on effects because its formation is an important part of the ocean "conveyor belt" which sends cold salty water plunging to the seabed and heading south, allowing warm water to flood in from the tropics.

One US climate scientist has warned that if the Gulf stream was turned off, Britain and Ireland would experience temperatures familiar on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen.

"That was too dramatic," said Dr Wadhams yesterday. Temperatures in Britain would drop about 5C and Norway would suffer a 10C fall. "It would not make us like Spitsbergen but it would be a very dramatic, serious change in the climate."

The Gulf stream flows north from the Caribbean, keeping Britain at least 5C warmer than expected at its latitude. Britain's chief scientist, Sir Robert May, once calculated that it delivered 27,000 times the warmth that all Britain's power stations could supply.

It merges with the north Atlantic current and the encounter of this giant, warm surface river with the Arctic winter ice is a powerful part of the convection machine which keeps the ocean swirling.

Ice is fresh water - so the sea that remains is increasingly cold, salty and dense. It sinks, beginning a kind of submarine river, 30 times the volume of the Amazon, flowing south again.

But the Arctic ice cover is in retreat - shrinking by an area the size of the Netherlands every year. It is also thinning, from more than three metres thick to less than two metres in 30 years.

What worried Dr Wadhams and his Arctic colleagues meeting in Cambridge yesterday was the failure, once again, of the huge Greenland ice tongue. It was a powerful agent in the ocean mixing system - and there were signs that the ocean circulation had begun to flag.

"Climate models predict that this process will continue, that there will be a continued loss of convection from the Greenland sea and also the Labrador sea," said Dr Wadhams. "When these both turn off, which will happen within the next 30 years, then the result will be a much slower transport of heat by the ocean from the tropics to our latitudes. And that will mean a cooling for Europe, and especially north west Europe."

This week climate scientists announced dramatic losses in the ozone layer over the Arctic, and blamed global warming in the lower atmosphere. Paradoxically, although the Arctic is warming - driven by the "greenhouse effect" of carbon dioxide from worldwide use of coal, natural gas and petrol - Britain could be condemned to a much colder future. Nations signed up to agreement in Kyoto in 1997 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions - but that may not be enough.

"If nations don't do what they say they are going to do, carbon dioxide emissions will be greater," said Dr Wadhams. "So the assumptions built into all this modelling is that CO2 will reach a peak eventually, and then fall off according to the Kyoto agreement. The Kyoto agreement enshrines what nations think they can manage. So I don't think there is anything anybody can do to fend this off."

Because the world is warming - glaciers everywhere are in retreat, springs are arriving earlier and autumns later, and six of the 10 warmest years ever recorded occurred in the 1990s - the effects would be slow.

"Europe won't see a dramatic cooling until the beginning of the next century," said Dr Wadhams. "It is just that we won't warm as fast as everybody else. The dramatic changes are already beginning to happen in the ocean but the greenhouse effect will stave it off. It will take 100 years for the climate of Britain and Norway to start to cool."

(GUARDIAN Science Report)

-- Risteard Mac Thomais (uachtaran@ireland.com), April 07, 2000

Answers

"Europe won't see a dramatic cooling until the beginning of the next century," said Dr Wadhams. "It is just that we won't warm as fast as everybody else. The dramatic changes are already beginning to happen in the ocean but the greenhouse effect will stave it off. It will take 100 years for the climate of Britain and Norway to start to cool."

100years???

who gives a f#ck what happens in 100 years!!!

Also look at the records taken over the last 2000 years. Cold harsch winters like in Spitzbergen where common in Europe.

The latest generations are just weak and expendable!

Survival of the fittest!

This planet will get rid of over population one way or another.

-- who cares? (whocares@aboutthis.not), April 07, 2000.


they haven't a clue whats really happening, think how many theories on climate will arise in the next 100 years

wish they'd shut up until they can prove their arguments

-- richard dale (richard.dale@onion.com), April 07, 2000.


So much for "Global Warming".

-- Freezing (Too cold@home.now), April 07, 2000.

It is thought that a similiar disruption of the Gulf Stream lead to the last ice age... And I wish I could find the damn link as the article was choke full of good information. Until it all comes to pass, of course, this is all speculation... Should we care?? Yeah, why is being soo short sighted considered a blessing??

-- Robert (celtic64@inficad.com), April 07, 2000.

Is this the article you're referring to, Robert? The Great Climate Flip-Flop by William H. Calvin

Who Cares,

Why don't you print out your post, put it in an envelope, and give it to your first grandchild?

Richard,

I'm really disappointed in your response. I've come to know you as one of the more thoughtful posters around here. Where would we be if everyone just shutup about everything until they were sure of their evidence and conclusions? A great way to advance science and understanding, eh?

Hallyx

"This is the way I think the world will end: with general giggling by all the witty heads, who think it is a joke." --- Kierkegaard

-- (Hallyx@aol.com), April 07, 2000.



UH OH...GLOBAL COOLING...here we go again.....

Your attention please, last weeks 'scientific' warnings of Global Warming and now deleted and replaced by this weeks warnings of Global Cooling...Next week will feature something else to get in a tizzy about.

TIME TO BURN MORE FRIGGIN HYDROCARBONS...gotta warm up those freezing Brits!

-- AHhhhhh (TheScienceOf@Politics.com), April 09, 2000.


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