Thanks to Luke for alerting us to this new research.
Following hot on the heels of recent climate revelations, such as the warming aerosols of Asian Brown Clouds, Climate Shifts, 1934 replacing 1998 as the warmest recorded year in the USA, and the new evidence for a large negative feedback due to the thinning of heat trapping clouds, Australian scientists at CSIRO have discovered a previously unrecognised deep ocean pathway linking the 3 southern hemisphere ocean basins, which is part of the global conveyer belt, or thermohaline circulation. Very important to global climate.
This is where I came in to the climate debate by initilally believing scare stories that the Gulf Stream was about to shut down and give europe a climate similar to Alaska. It turned out that the slowing down was a mis-calculation, plus ‘mean wind advection’ and the earth’s rotation are important factors in driving ocean circulations, according to Carl Wunsch.
The CSIRO news release is here:
Ocean ‘supergyre’ link to climate regulator
Also on CNN who unfortunately saw fit to introduce the now customary alarmism:
“The best known of the global ocean currents is the North Atlantic loop of the Great Ocean Conveyer, which brings warm water from the Equator to waters off northern Europe, ensuring relatively mild weather there. Scientists say if the conveyor collapsed, northern Europe would be plunged into an ice age.”
Of course, this new ocean ‘supergyre’ will have to be incorporated into those diagnostic tools known as ‘climate models,’ along with the results of other recent research.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Now thats interesting, if you go offshore east coast about 20nm to where the continental shelf drops off there are a heap of dolphins, birds, fish – a convergence of various currents bringing food to the surface.
Is the statement “if the conveyor collapsed, northern Europe would be plunged into an ice age” untrue? If not, then how does it qualify as alarmism? After all, it suggested nothing about the likelihood of such an event occurring, that I could see anyway.
There was really no need for CNN to talk about the conveyor collapsing – it is variable, but as Carl Wunsch pointed out:
Gulf Stream safe if wind
blows and Earth turns
Sir — Your News story “Gulf Stream
probed for early warnings of system
failure” (Nature 427, 769; 2004) discusses
what the climate in the south of England
would be like “without the Gulf Stream”.
Sadly, this phrase has been seen far too
often, usually in newspapers concerned
with the unlikely possibility of a new ice
age in Britain triggered by the loss of the
Gulf Stream.
European readers should be reassured
that the Gulf Stream’s existence is a
consequence of the large-scale wind system
over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the
nature of fluid motion on a rotating
planet. The only way to produce an ocean
circulation without a Gulf Stream is either
to turn off the wind system, or to stop the
Earth’s rotation, or both.
Real questions exist about conceivable
changes in the ocean circulation and its
climate consequences. However, such
discussions are not helped by hyperbole
and alarmism. The occurrence of a climate
state without the Gulf Stream any time
soon — within tens of millions of years —
has a probability of little more than zero.
Carl Wunsch
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Massachusetts 02139, USA
Paul: It’s been my contention on this blog several times at least now, water on the shelf above the Tasman outflow is much warmer than we are used to and that changes everything for SE aus.
I thought it was Al Gore who said if the Atlantic Conveyor shuts down Europe will plunge into a new ice age.