Scientists monitoring the Yenisey, Lena and Ob’, Arctic rivers comparable in size to the Mississippi that push fresh water from the Arctic into the north Atlantic, are concerned about potential climate changes (via NPR) — ironically, an ice age produced by the melting of glaciers in the Arctic due to global warming. As explained by Thom Hartmann:
[I]f enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age – in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset – and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the “little ice age” of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.
Here’s how it works.
If you look at a globe, you’ll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?
It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they’d be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as “The Great Conveyor Belt,” which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.
The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the Earth’s rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east.
As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a whirlpool of falling water that’s 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient mariners).
This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn’t surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland.
The out-flowing undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm, fresher water from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops around North America where it’s known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland, it’s cooled off and evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous feed for that deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific.
These two flows – warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river – are known as the Great Conveyor Belt.
Amazingly, the Great Conveyor Belt is only thing between comfortable summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America.
Full article, from 2003, here. With the as-yet unmeasured effect of the melting of glaciers in Greenland, says Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of geosciences and director of the University of Arizona Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, “… you are talking about quite a bit more fresh water than we have now, and I don’t think anyone can say with confidence that we’re safe from a large scale, abrupt change in the north Atlantic.”
August 25, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Head for the hills!
September 20, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I took a geology class in college and my professor discussed this phenomenon. Yes, the level of the Atlantic would raise slightly, but the resulting fresh water flow would then be picked up by the winds mentioned in the article above and deposited in the northern hemisphere as ice, hence a mini-ice age.
Just years back pundits were warning of an impending ice age, now it’s global warming. That just tells me that the average climatologist hasn’t got enough data to predict heating or cooling of the globe. And all the talk of the melting of the arctic ice cap, to what do they compare their studies? All of the data is for the past two centuries, at best. Let’s see, our world has been around for how many thousands of years? I’m thinking “Chicken Little,” here.
September 28, 2008 at 3:57 am
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October 23, 2008 at 6:52 pm
clean energy ,and the solution for the Greenland gulfstream slowdown:
Put in sea a construction of windmills (out of the reach of icebergs) combined with electric boilers, these get preheated by suncollectors and sunmirrors.
the steam they produce gets used by steam engines wich produce again electricity ,salt and when you condesate the steam coming from the steam engines sweet water,the steam you don’t need you blow into the air.
You take out salt water coming from the warm gulfstream and the left over salt from the steam engines gets used to release in the cold stream.
So the cold stream gets saltier again and and won’t mingel with the warm gulfstream because before it was less saltier caused by the melting gletchers and slowing down the warm gulfstream becaurse less saltier water is lighter.
Preventing an possibel iceage.
The sweet water can then be used to make hydrogen ,so if there is for exampel a lot of wind and you don’t need all that electricity , you are abel to stock it and use it later.
The rest of the steam you blow in the air.
The oxygen deriving from turning water into hydrogen can be devided in sea to clean the water and to make more suitabel for marinelife.
So you produce electricity and /or hydrogen
Wich you get to shore with pipelines or from tanks with tankers and cabels
Van Aerschot,willem
Reppelse baan 47
3271 Averbode,Belgium
email:willemva@skynet.be
Clean water ,clean energy ,and the solution for the gulfstream slowdown:
Put in sea a construction of windmills combined with electric boilers, these get preheated by suncollectors and sunmirrors.
the steam they produce gets used by steam engines wich produce again electricity ,salt and when you condesate the steam coming from the steam engines sweet water.
The salt water you take out of salt water coming from the warm gulfstream and the left over salt from the steam engines gets used to release in the cold stream.Or you make the cooled down gulfstream saltier by taking water from the surface and steam it and put the salt in the cooled down gulfstream.
So the cold stream gets saltier again and and won’t mingel with the warm gulfstream because before it was less saltier caused by the melting gletchers and slowing down the warm gulfstream becaurse less saltier water is lighter.
Preventing an possibel iceage.
The sweet water can then be used to make hydrogen ,so if there is for exampel a lot of wind and you don’t need all that electricity , you are abel to stock it and use it later.
The rest of the water can with adding of minnerals serve as drinking water.
The oxygen deriving from turning water into hydrogen can be devided in sea to clean the water and to make more suitabel for marinelife.
So you produce electricity and drinking water and /or hydrogen
wich you get to shore with pipelines and cabels
October 23, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Wil, too may problems with windmills. I like the Davis turbine myself and that other tide driven system being installed off ..isn’t it Ireland?
Wanna do something nice for your country? Get the people on welfare to pick up all the Jupilier cans and recycle them into little red cars.
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