SCI/TECH: Significant Weakening Of Gulf Stream Detected

My thoughts on this subject are that most people won't believe it. They will only believe it when the reality of a bitterly cold summer is staring at them in the face or some other extreme weather situation. If the world has extreme droughts and freezing temperatures in the summer, crops will have a tough time and unfortunately the price of food will skyrocket so much that people may not be able to afford it. Most people don't want to believe such doomsday thoughts in my opinion especially if they think, I haven't seen anything that bad so far. There is just a lot of uncertainty about what will happen and even doubt that the gulf stream is really shutting down in my opinion.

If the DOD or a major news organization announced the gulf stream flow was only at 25% of normal, I get the impression most people wouldn't even know what might result from that.

I remember reading something many years ago that during the last ice age, the artic ocean was not frozen. (I don't know if that is true or not.) Is this part of the natural cycle of the beginning of an ice age? If not then maybe it's just a temporary shutdown of the gulf stream from a few years to 100 years. I'm probably in the same boat as many others and want to hear more reports and studies of what is happening.

It's definitely agree it's safe to be prepared, if something like this is happening. Doesn't mean we need to run around in a panic, but we need to be ready.

Troy

This article goes in to much greater detail about the problem. Perhaps it is time to press the panic button.

"Scientists from Cambridge University have confirmed that the Gulf
Stream is weakening, and this is likely to bring much colder temperatures
to Europe within a few years. The weakening is significant: the Gulf
Stream is flowing at a quarter of the strength that was present five years
ago.

This is happening because gigantic chimneys of cold water that were
sinking from the surface to the sea bed off Greenland have disappeared.
These chimneys are the key engine of world climate as we know it today,
and their disappearance signals the beginning of a great catastrophe.

The Cambridge scientists are predicting now that there will be clear water
at the North Pole as early as 2020, and that temperatures in Britain are
likely to drop by 5-8 degrees Celsius, from an average of 22 at present to
14 to 17 in the future. An average as low as 17 (62 Fahrenheit) will mean
that the summer growing season will be catastrophically curtailed in
Europe, leading to huge declines in production from one of the world's
primary surplus production zones. "

You can view the entire article at...

www.unknowncountry.com...

Originally posted by LazarusTheLong
for instance... England recently was astounded to have a destructive tornado form in a part of britain that has never had one before...

All parts of Britain can experience tornadoes. No idea which one you're referring to but we rarely get anything over F1 here.

I can assure you categorically that there has been no unusual tornadic activity in the UK in recent years

btw I shouldn't worry about a new ice age just yet. We're at the wrong stage of the Milankovitch Cycle at the moment for an ice sheet to form over Canada, even assuming a gulf stream shut-down somehow increased winter precipitation there.....

What it might mean for Britain is colder winters. That's about it. Summer temps would be largely unaffected. In fact, this may be good news for Western Europe as it may reduce the possibility of further heatwaves like that of 2003

Cold winters and reduced risk of summer heatwave? Bring it on!

(Oh, and just bear in mind that non-meteorological websites shouldn't be trusted as sources of meteorological info )

I really wish we had better models pertaining to climate change effects. One of the biggest unknowns in the models is the reflectance of the Earth. How much sunlight is relected back into space versus being absorbed by the Earth is vital to understanding the root causes of global heating & cooling, yet to date we don't know. Our current best means of measuring the Albedo of the Earth is to measure the intensity of Earthshine evident on the Moon. We do not have a satellite that can directly measure this.

Is it possible this story is being kept quiet by government order and only allowed to leak out at conspiracy sites so as not to panic the public? I can easily imagine the current US administration does not even know there is a problem since they so boldly made a recent mistake in saying they captured the #2 or #3 guy in Al Qaeda and that guy was not even on the most wanted list by the state department.

The really big problem I see with this chain of events is the fact that it involves the weather and the forecast for 5 days out is often wrong. Now we are trying to forecast monster storms 10 years out. I believe last summer in the US was known as being cooler than normal on many occasions. Even this spring I heard on the news that it seems to have often been cooler than normal until just the last week or so. It would be real nice to have a good forecast and to know when the gulf stream might completely shut down.


[edit on 10-5-2005 by orionthehunter]

After skimming over related information in another thread found here
www.abovetopsecret.com...
I am wondering if the sea surface temperatures have changed much this year from the last few in the Atlantic Ocean. Anyone know? I'm just curious what we might expect to see first in this chain of events that may be unfolding. I guess I'm of a similiar spirit to the storm chasers and I would like to watch things unfold.

Is this even a story? This story has no meteorologists or oceanographers backing it up and the data is questionable, 1 data point if my info is correct. Sure it could be happening and scientist are often dogmatic on how they see it so I would not suprise me if they over look it until it is too obvious to miss. Like I said only time will tell if these is going to become a major event.

I've never understood why government(s) do not consider such events as paramount to their national security interests....

History will mark this age as the height of humanity's ignorance...

[edit on 10-5-2005 by loam]

I think some folks want to shrug this off as a vacation or something, but we could be dealing with a severe loss of life if drastic weather changes do come to pass. But being optimistic, I see there is a lot of things we can do to clean up the mess we have made, and we can prepare. Hell, it is an exciting challenge anyway, one that kind of makes me want to break out the superman cape. (I know some of you guys want a big "S" on your chest and a pair of ass flattering tighties too) It's the challenge of survival that crosses boarders, and could finally unite us all, not as Americans, not as Chinese, not as Irish, but as people, as mankind.

Troy

Or it could make each one of us the competition for food and shelter....

I'd rather try avoiding getting there.

Originally posted by jrod
Is this even a story? This story has no meteorologists or oceanographers backing it up and the data is questionable, 1 data point if my info is correct. Sure it could be happening and scientist are often dogmatic on how they see it so I would not suprise me if they over look it until it is too obvious to miss. Like I said only time will tell if these is going to become a major event.

This story is based on the work of Cambridge University. This builds a great deal more on previous work done by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I remember finding absolutely wild ocean temperature swings last year as well which are very hard to explain outside of this current problem.

If you check this discussion out from June/July of last year...

www.climatepatrol.com...

You will see the wild changes I am talking about. Here is a sea surface temperature anomaly map from last year that showed a problem of where the gulf stream should be.

www.climatepatrol.com...

Then of course there is this very odd feature from last year as well..

www.climatepatrol.com...

This is the most recent SST anomaly map and you can see that the waters towards Europe are warm right now but where the gulf stream should be near the U.S. shows below normal water temperatures once again.

www.cdc.noaa.gov...

Enjoy.

CNN has finally picked up on this story as well. It is about time the national media covers this.

www.cnn.com...

Originally posted by Essan

Originally posted by LazarusTheLong
for instance... England recently was astounded to have a destructive tornado form in a part of britain that has never had one before...

All parts of Britain can experience tornadoes. No idea which one you're referring to but we rarely get anything over F1 here.

I can assure you categorically that there has been no unusual tornadic activity in the UK in recent years

the telegraph paper disagrees with you...
wizard of OZ in england

they seemed suprised... maybe you are now also...

That's true, it would be more pleasant if it didn't happen. But we could start now and bind together for a common cause of cleaing up the mess.

Troy

I have started a list of SST anomaly images where you can compare ocean temp changes about every other day. I have a chart from a few days ago which you can compare to the 90 day seasonal sst anomaly. I have added today's map as well. There is appreciable cooling in the Atlantic when comparing the chart from a few days ago to the 90 day seasonal average. There is also cooling when comparing the charts of today from that of two days ago.

www.climatepatrol.com...

More data will be added as it becomes available.

Indy, if i remember correctly i think you were one of the people who about a year ago or less was not agreeing with Gazz and me on this ,when we were presenting this kind of info in the past.

When did you change your mind? and was there any evidence in specific which changed your mind?

It was probably someone else because I have been on this Atlantic current thing for a long time. Going back a few years actually.

It is good to see coverage on this issue. Now, will it surpass the "not as important" Michael Jackson case, I don't know?

Troy

[edit on 27-5-2005 by cybertroy]