Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

[Celumnaz]

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

· Slowing of current by a third in 12 years could bring more extreme weather

· Temperatures in Britain likely to drop by one degree in next decade

Ian Sample, science correspondent

Thursday December 1, 2005

The Guardian

The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.

Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a £4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.

The network should also answer the pressing question of whether the significant weakening of the current is a short-term variation, or part of a more devastating long-term slowing of the flow.

If the current remains as weak as it is, temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by an average of 1C in the next decade, according to Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton who led the study. "Models show that if it shuts down completely, 20 years later, the temperature is 4C to 6C degrees cooler over the UK and north-western Europe," Dr Bryden said.

Although climate records suggest that the current has ground to a halt in the distant past, the prospect of it shutting down entirely within the century are extremely low, according to climate modellers.

The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current.

The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe. The report appears in the journal Nature today.

Disruption of the conveyor-belt current was the basis of the film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicted a world thrown into chaos by a sudden and dramatic drop in temperatures. That scenario was dismissed by researchers as fantasy, because climate models suggest that the current is unlikely to slow so suddenly.

Marec Srokosz of the National Oceanographic Centre said: "The most realistic part of the film is where the climatologists are talking to the politicians and the politicians are saying 'we can't do anything about it'."

Chris West, director of the UK climate impacts programme at Oxford University's centre for the environment, said: "The only way computer models have managed to simulate an entire shutdown of the current is to magic into existence millions of tonnes of fresh water and dump it in the Atlantic. It's not clear where that water could ever come from, even taking into account increased Greenland melting."

Uncertainties in climate change models mean that the overall impact on Britain of a slowing down in the current are hard to pin down. "We know that if the current slows down, it will lead to a drop in temperatures in Britain and northern Europe of a few degrees, but the effect isn't even over the seasons. Most of the cooling would be in the winter, so the biggest impact would be much colder winters," said Tim Osborn, of the University of East Anglia climatic research unit.

The final impact of any cooling effect will depend on whether it outweighs the global warming that, paradoxically, is driving it. According to climate modellers, the drop in temperature caused by a slowing of the Atlantic current will, in the long term, be swamped by a more general warming of the atmosphere.

"If this was happening in the absence of generally increasing temperatures, I would be concerned," said Dr Smith. Any cooling driven by a weakening of the Atlantic current would probably only slow warming rather than cancel it out all together. Even if a slowdown in the current put the brakes on warming over Britain and parts of Europe, the impact would be felt more extremely elsewhere, he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,....html?gusrc=rss

[Celumnaz]

The Coming Ice Age

Philip V. Brennan

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005

Get ready. It's about to hit the fan. Recently I warned that the coming winter will be the worst in history. At the same time so-called weather experts were predicting a mild winter, some Western states were being battered by record snowstorms. Since then things have gotten worse.

I'm not reveling in schadenfreude – the satisfaction in seeing misfortune one has predicted coming to pass. It's no fun being right in this kind of situation.

Here's a brief rundown of what's going on, courtesy of iceagenow.com:

Early snow brings chaos to Europe, Nov. 27, 2005 – With more than an inch of snow falling per hour and winds up to 100 mph sweeping in off the North Sea, traffic officials reported the worst gridlock in the UK's history.

In the Netherlands, high winds and sudden freezing temperatures caused havoc on the national rail and road networks. Hundreds of stranded Dutch commuters spent Friday night in temporary Red Cross shelters.

Problems due to the sudden cold weather were also reported in Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece. Deaths were reported in Belgium and the Czech Republic.

In Germany, 250,000 people lost electricity due to downed power lines.

Flight delays were reported in Amsterdam and Brussels. In Duesseldorf, Germany, eight inches of snow forced the international airport to close for four hours. Paris's main airport, Charles de Gaulle, cancelled dozens flights because of the snow, and the Eiffel Tower closed after morning snowfall made it too slippery to climb. Railway traffic was also disrupted. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051126/ap_on_re_eu/europe_snow

UK bracing for Arctic chill, Nov. 24, 2005 – Over the next 24 hours, a blast of cold Arctic air will sweep southwards across the country. By dawn tomorrow, there could be up to 25 cm (10 inches) of snow over higher parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and 20 cm (8 inches) across the moors of southwest England. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/24112005news.shtml

Cold blast for UK by end of week, Nov. 23, 2005 – Very cold northerly wind blasts straight from the Arctic should hit the UK later this week. All parts of the UK could see some snow. At this stage, Scotland , Northern Ireland , south-western England and Wales look like getting the worst of the weather. Blizzard conditions may exist for a time over higher ground. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/23112005news.shtml

Fuel Prices Soar in UK, Nov. 3, 2005 – Gas and electricity prices soared 70 per cent last week as traders worried that the UK's utility network will be unable to cope with the winter's first real cold snap and the closure of a gas terminal.

'Devastating' winter ahead for United Kingdom, Nov. 1, 2005 – There is a 67 percent chance that this winter will be among the coldest on record, say forecasters, including the Meteorological Office. This prediction is based on sea temperatures in the Atlantic.

* * *

In the U.S., the first big snowstorm of the season, part of a treacherous system that sent tornadoes roaring through Arkansas and Kansas, shut down hundreds of miles of major highways across the Plains states Monday,

According to the National Weather Service, 6-foot drifts were common in eastern Colorado, western Kansas and Nebraska, while winds up to 60 mph piled drifts 3 feet high in Pierre, S.D. Snow fell as far south as the Texas Panhandle.

"You can't even see," Bill Kanitig of the Sherman County, Kan., sheriff's office told the AP. "The highway is snowpacked, and it's slick and everybody's sliding off."

The South Dakota Highway Patrol reports it closed a 175-mile stretch of I-90 on Monday from Kadoka to Mitchell. In central Nebraska, a 60-mile stretch of I-80 was closed Monday from North Platte east to Lexington. Numerous other highways were closed across the Plains. The Minnesota State Patrol urged people not to travel in the northwestern part of the state, and schools in large parts of western Minnesota were closed.

The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings and severe winter storm warnings for parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Wind, snow and ice snapped power lines and blacked out thousands of customers in eastern South Dakota. "A couple of the lines around Huron had icing to the diameter [of a] softball," Tom Glanzer, a spokesman for NorthWestern Energy, told the AP.

Grass fires driven by the storm system's wind blackened thousands of acres in parts of six Texas counties and in Oklahoma. Several homes were destroyed in the two states and hundreds of families had to evacuate in Oklahoma, authorities said.

In the Colorado mountains, the storm brought 26 inches of new snow to the Steamboat Springs ski resort over the weekend. Two cross-country skiers were found in good condition Sunday after being missing overnight about 25 miles north of Steamboat Springs.

The AP reported that tornadoes and thunderstorms ripped through eastern Kansas and Arkansas on Sunday, killing a motorist and damaging homes and businesses in several counties.

In Kansas, a tornado damaged more than 30 homes at Fort Riley and briefly knocked out power to the military base. Tornadoes were reported in six other counties in east-central Kansas, as well, though the damage was minor, according to the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

High wind or tornadoes destroyed at least eight homes in Arkansas. Officials planned to assess other reports of damage Monday. About 7,500 homes were without power in Arkansas late Sunday, Entergy spokesman James Thompson said.

In central Arkansas, about 40 miles northwest of Little Rock, a suspected tornado struck a lumberyard near Plumerville, scattering wood across Interstate 40 like matchsticks and overturning vehicles.

The bottom line here is that cold, frigid air keeps driving south from the polar regions, which the Global Warming hucksters keep telling us are warming and that the polar ice cap is melting. They hope we'll forget the simple fact that a disappearing ice cap and warming polar regions cannot produce and send bitterly cold air southward.

That frigid air meets warmer air coming up from the tropics, and the colder the air from the poles and the warmer the air it meets, the more violent the weather.

If you look around the world, you'll note a lot of tectonic activity, especially underseas, where red hot magma is boiling up from under the ocean bottoms and heating the oceans. Like a teapot with boiling water shooting steam upward, the superheated oceans are sending greater and greater amounts of moisture aloft, where it is converted into the precipitation that is causing record-breaking massive rainstorms and blizzards.

Doubt that? Take a look at new satellite images showing Montagu Island, a volcano in the South Sandwich Islands, growing by 50 acres (0.2 square kilometers) in the last month as lava pours into the sea.

"Red hot lava has formed a molten river 90 meters [99 yards] wide that is moving fast, possibly several meters per second and extending the shoreline on the north side of the island," said John Smellie of British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "This event is special because Montagu Island is mostly ice covered and it's very rare that we get to make direct observations of eruptions under ice sheets."

This is only the beginning. The worst is yet to come. Don't be surprised to see 20 feet of snow fall on some areas of the U.S. before the winter ends – if indeed it does.

If you haven't seen it, take a look at my study "The Iceman Cometh" at http://www.pvbr.com/Issue_1/global.htm.

You might get the idea that the world may well be about to pay the price for thumbing our nose at God.

* * * * * *

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2...29/193228.shtml

===========================

www.iceagenow.com

Looks pretty dang good to me. Anyone have any info if there's anything "questionable" about the info there?

[Piney]

This is scary. My sister was talking about global warming stopping the Gulf Stream and sending us into an Ice Age. Mass migrations South. Prepare for Texas to get crowded.

Lapi'che

[Conspiracy]

when this happens all the southern areas all over the world will be to crowded that they wont be accepting everyone, whenever this ice age hits, going to be total chaos ;(

[+joc]

Now which is it?! Global warming or Global freezing?

[Conspiracy]

well.. global warming will lead to a ice age or global freezing, w/e one u wanna call it

[Erikl]

Finally the weather will be cooler here... I mean it's already December and the last few days were summer-hot!

What's going on with the weather these days?

And why did it decide to get all wacko exactly when I'm in the military?

[.AKUMA.]

Erikl it may be cool for you my friend but us all in Britain are doomed

[Celumnaz]

This is scary. My sister was talking about global warming stopping the Gulf Stream and sending us into an Ice Age. Mass migrations South. Prepare for Texas to get crowded.

Lapi'che

ACK!!! Noooooo!!!

LOL that reminds me of that movie Day After Tomorrow or something like that. I forget the name. Was an environmentalist "shock" flick. Top half of the US (to the cheering of environmentalists) was buried in ice and snow. Some crazy storm insta-froze people and such.

The part that reminded me of was at the end, the southern migration had much of the US in Mexico, and that touchy-feely feel-good humanity stuff and the irony for the heartless right wingers of US immigrants pouring into mexico... pretty hilarious stuff...

But that makes me think of it.

All resources put towards Stopping something like this are a Waste. Better use put to Adapting to what Nature Is Going To Do Despite What We Humans Want.

[Erikl]

Erikl it may be cool for you my friend but us all in Britain are doomed

Don't worry I'll welcome you all, northern-european UM members .

[Raptor]

Is it true that if every machine in the world was turned off than the Earth could repair itself in just a matter of days?

[Mekorig]

@Celumnaz:I remeber the movie. Too "super disaster" for my personal taste, latoug i think the whole cinema hall laugh in the part when the USA president forgive the external debt of the whole latin america to aloow the USA people to migrate down south.

[MrVelvet]

Erikl it may be cool for you my friend but us all in Britain are doomed

Oh come on...It's a little premature to throw in the towel just yet don't you think? I'm sure the Canadians (pros at cold weather) will be glad to offer advice...Seriously, I wonder if all of the hot water 'backing up' in the tropics was the reason for 26 named storms this year???

[PLO]

only a matter of time too before california slides to the bottom of davey jonses locker.

Edited December 7, 2005 by PLO

[kaliconsort]

Is it true that if every machine in the world was turned off than the Earth could repair itself in just a matter of days?

The earth does not need to be repaired. She is not broken. Ice ages can be predicted millenia in advance. It is quite simple actually. Three things affect how much energy from the sun that the earth receives. These are:Eccentricity, Obliquity, Precession. Each of them has a cycle measured in years. The cycles are 95,000 years for eccentricity, 42,000 years for obliquity, and 12,000 years for precession. Each of these affects the amount of energy from the sun that the earth receives. Ice ages occur when one or more of these cycles is at the point where it is causing the earth to receive the least amount of energy from the sun. The ice age can be either a mini ice age or a major ice age depending on how many of the three factors are at the low energy point. It is quite easy to predict when all three will be in alignment at the low energy for each, thus signifying a major ice age.

Eccentricity is the change in the shape of the orbit of the earth around the sun, which moves from a circle to an elongated oval over 95,000 years. The difference between the distance from the sun to the earth at phelion and perihelion when the earth's orbit is circular is about 3 million miles, but when the orbit becomes an elongated oval the distance from earth to sun at phelion and perihelion differs by as much as 30%, which can be up to 28 million miles. This can cause quite a difference in the amount of energy the earth receives from the sun.

Obliquity. On a 42,000 year cycle the earth wobbles on its axis, this wobble causes the angle of the earth's axis to tilt, the higher the angle the greater the difference in seasonal temperature. What is most interesting is the fact that it isn't how cold the winter is that brings on an ice age but how cool the summer, if the summer is cold enough that the previous winter's snow fall does not melt off, then snow accumulates from year to year, the earth absorbs less solar radiation due to the snow cover which causes more accumulation which causes less solar radiation absorption......well, you get the picture.

Procession. On a 12,000 year cycle the seasons shift, winter is in June and summer is in December in the Northern Hemisphere. More importantly, the stars in the sky are different. Star light is a factor in the weather on the earth. The phrase "dog days of summer" was coined many thousands of years ago and relates to the effect that the dog start (Sirius) has on the temperature during earth's summers.

When you line up the most extreme distance between earth and sun due to eccentricity with the angle of the earth's tilt being the worst in terms of solar radiation absorption with the dog star being at the far end of the procession of the constallations, then you have the recipe for a major ice age. When this will occur again can be predicted.

Man's impact on the earth's ability to absorb solar radiation is infitesimal compared to the impact caused by the big three: eccentricity, obliquity, and procession. So, shutting off all the machines would not make any difference.

[SilverCougar]

Now which is it?! Global warming or Global freezing?

I'm going to beat you with a gods damned SPORK Joc!!

I swear you do this to annoy me!!!

[Celumnaz]

That was Beautiful kaliconsort!!!! Thank you.

[Essan]

Looks pretty dang good to me. Anyone have any info if there's anything "questionable" about the info there?

Well, for starters:

'Devastating' winter ahead for United Kingdom, Nov. 1, 2005 – There is a 67 percent chance that this winter will be among the coldest on record, say forecasters, including the Meteorological Office. This prediction is based on sea temperatures in the Atlantic.

Actually, the forecast is a 67% chance that this winter will be the coldest for 10 years. Oh, and the last 10 years have all been milder than average.....

Just very, very, very slightly different......

The rest of the article is a record of normal climatic variations and lack of understanding of tectonics and meteorology.

[Raptor]

Thanks for that post kaliconsort. I somehow doubt that stars so many millions of miles away could affect our weather, but what do I know?

[FrothyDog]

yes, however, due to the situation with "big three" at this time, we should be getting colder. however, greenhouse gases, which have multiplied enormously since the industrial revolution, work just like a greenhouse: they let light in, and trap it as heat. we are actually getting warmer, it is just harder to tell the further you are from the poles. it does not happen evenly. where the equator may experience a change in 1 degree, the poles can change by 30 degrees or more. we are getting warmer, my friend. but as the earth spent most of its life not covered with ice, i think that it is a pretty safe bet to say things will change, but if we're creative we will stick around for a good while yet.