Posted by Peter Ceresole on July 12, 2005 at 20:18:07 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Gulf Stream was Hurricane Dennis versus Ed Kiser posted by Owen Roberts on July 12, 2005 at 11:20:53:
There is a widely held theory that if global warming continues the UK will get much colder as the release of fresh water into the Atlantic will stop the Gulf Stream or Atlantic Conveyor as it is known.
It's happened in the past- about 10,000 years ago at the time of the last climate warming, the gulf stream switched off. The evidence is in the deposits of tiny shells from creatures that lived in the warmer water; as the temperature fell the deposits stopped. There are mud cores in the Lamont Doherty Geophysical Observatory in New York that show this change very clearly. What's interesting is that it happened over a very short period of time- decades rather than centuries. It appears to have been a kind of switch, not a gradual process.
I was told (at the Lamont Doherty but it's no mystery) that the Gulf Stream delivers 30% of all the solar energy falling on the surface of the Atlantic to North West Europe, and more particularly to Britain and Ireland. This would be a very major change- close to catastrophic for established ways of life- and would happen very quickly.
Just imagine what it would mean if the Irish and British climate became continental rather than Atlantic- more like Labrador or Russia. Unlike in previous centuries nobody would starve- wealth and transportation would see to that- but it would be hard. Housing standards in both places have been based on the Atlantic climate and insulation standards are atrocious in a great part of the housing stock. Humans are bad at managing change. The end of the Gulf Stream would be one of the bigger shocks that would follow from global warming.
Although we should get it into proportion- it's nothing like the dangers facing Bangladeshis in the Bay of Bengal from sea level rise and the increase in extreme weather.