Apr 11, 2018 08:00 PM
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brie...ange-amoc/
EXCERPT: When you picture the rugged coastlines of Norway, tropical heat probably doesn’t come to mind, but it should. Even in the country’s Arctic reaches, the coast is typically free from ice and snow, and the weather is often more Seattle than Anchorage. How can that be? Residents can thank the Gulf Stream, an ocean conveyor belt that pushes warm water their way from the tropics.
And Northern Europeans aren’t the only ones who should be thankful, either. Much of Europe and the east coast of North America benefit from a massive system of circulating seawater called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, or AMOC. The Gulf Stream is just one small part of that system. Sunlight might be most intense at Earth’s equator, but ocean circulation pushes that tropical heat toward the poles. When the currents transporting that heat change, it can have major impacts.
And now new evidence suggests that climate change is already weakening this massive ocean circulatory system. In a pair of papers published Wednesday in Nature, two sets of independent researchers used very different techniques to reach the same startling conclusion....
MORE: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brie...ange-amoc/
EXCERPT: When you picture the rugged coastlines of Norway, tropical heat probably doesn’t come to mind, but it should. Even in the country’s Arctic reaches, the coast is typically free from ice and snow, and the weather is often more Seattle than Anchorage. How can that be? Residents can thank the Gulf Stream, an ocean conveyor belt that pushes warm water their way from the tropics.
And Northern Europeans aren’t the only ones who should be thankful, either. Much of Europe and the east coast of North America benefit from a massive system of circulating seawater called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, or AMOC. The Gulf Stream is just one small part of that system. Sunlight might be most intense at Earth’s equator, but ocean circulation pushes that tropical heat toward the poles. When the currents transporting that heat change, it can have major impacts.
And now new evidence suggests that climate change is already weakening this massive ocean circulatory system. In a pair of papers published Wednesday in Nature, two sets of independent researchers used very different techniques to reach the same startling conclusion....
MORE: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brie...ange-amoc/