Global Cooling?

theage A massive whirlpool has developed off the coast of NSW, dragging down the sea surface by almost a metre, diverting a mighty ocean current and chilling Sydney beachgoers.

The mysterious whirlpool is 200 kilometres across and 1000 metres deep, reaching the ocean floor, CSIRO oceanographers say. The centre is 100 kilometres from the coast and could stay there for several months.

And another eddy of similar proportions is sitting further off the coast.

Are these events local to the southern hemisphere or are they a part of a much larger scale global event that is yet to be identified? It strikes me as the later, but I imagine that some folks on ATS can address this with some science that is better than my hunch.

Aww, 14 degrees C? Pfft! It gets to 10 down here in Vicco. That that's cold.

I have never heard of ocean-going whirlpools. Indeed, I thought that whirlpools only ever formed when rivers and such are around.
I wonder what caused it? Starting a 200km wide whirlpool in the open ocean would require no small amount of energy.

[edit on 15/3/2007 by watch_the_rocks]

Wow good find df1,I didn`t see this on our news here.

A bit more from another scorce.

"The eddies in this part of the world are very hard to predict," Dr Griffin said.

They naturally drift westwards but keep bumping up against the shore and may be re-energised by other tidal and weather patterns, he said.

The whirlpool will today be discussed in Hobart at a meeting of 200 Australian, European and US scientists working with satellite images to map water temperatures.

scorce

Emphisis mine

It sounds as though they also develop in other parts of the world,but I searched a bit and didn`t find any as large as these.

Hope we hear what comes from the meeting.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Aww, 14 degrees C? Pfft! It gets to 10 down here in Vicco. That that's cold.

Yeah but you guys are virtually Eskimos down there anyway.