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Just off the coast of New York is the Gulf Stream. It’s a weird current that moves warm water from the Equator northward to the Arctic.

I swam in its bounty every summer as a kid on Cape Cod. I felt lucky because lots of my friends had homes on the other side of the Cape, and the water there was much colder. But the current is reportedly slowing down. And that means colder water along its northern stretches, such as Cape Cod. In other words, my kids may not be as lucky as I was to swim in warm water and snub noses at their friends; the water will be equally as cold.

Of course there could be more serious consequences of the Gulf Stream slowing.

If you recall the film The Day After Tomorrow, the reason New York and northern latitudes went into deep freeze was because the current stopped abruptly. Scientists say the current won’t scream to a halt; that was Hollywood fantasy. But a slowing has its own dramatic consequences — mostly more extreme winter temperatures in northern regions.

The Guardian newspaper best describes the Gulf Stream for the general public: “The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

“Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current.”

Warmer areas and factors such as the Gulf Stream get less attention in the context of global warming because higher degrees in areas of higher temperatures create marginal differences. If the temperature were heading in the opposite direction, on the other hand–getting colder–all eyes would be on the Equator and things like the Gulf Stream. It’s worth looking at the world’s hot spots today because, ironically, they may make the world colder in the age of global warming. And those extreme weather conditions will need to be dealt with too.  

From that perspective The Day After Tomorrow is already here: Last year some of the coldest temperatures on record were recorded…in some of the world’s warmest areas.

Global warming shouldn’t be ignored in warm areas either. 

March 25th, 2008 by Thomas Kostigen in ocean life | 2 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >