See thread: http://www.latechbbb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28667Quote:
Originally Posted by saltydawg
Now that's Salty...
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See thread: http://www.latechbbb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28667Quote:
Originally Posted by saltydawg
Now that's Salty...
i don't know what it's like where you guys are, but what i'm feeling right now is not global warming. i've never whitnessed two consecutive weeks this cold in october in the south.
The longer-term picture.
http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_re...-05-11-01.html
The Day after Tomorrow?
Scientists claimed this to be science fiction when this movie came out.
Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream
· Slowing of current by a third in 12 years could bring more extreme weather
· Temperatures in Britain likely to drop by one degree in next decade
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday December 1, 2005
The Guardian
The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.
Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.
The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a £4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.
The network should also answer the pressing question of whether the significant weakening of the current is a short-term variation, or part of a more devastating long-term slowing of the flow.
If the current remains as weak as it is, temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by an average of 1C in the next decade, according to Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton who led the study. "Models show that if it shuts down completely, 20 years later, the temperature is 4C to 6C degrees cooler over the UK and north-western Europe," Dr Bryden said.
Although climate records suggest that the current has ground to a halt in the distant past, the prospect of it shutting down entirely within the century are extremely low, according to climate modellers.
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.
The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe. The report appears in the journal Nature today.
Disruption of the conveyor-belt current was the basis of the film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicted a world thrown into chaos by a sudden and dramatic drop in temperatures. That scenario was dismissed by researchers as fantasy, because climate models suggest that the current is unlikely to slow so suddenly.
Marec Srokosz of the National Oceanographic Centre said: "The most realistic part of the film is where the climatologists are talking to the politicians and the politicians are saying 'we can't do anything about it'."
Chris West, director of the UK climate impacts programme at Oxford University's centre for the environment, said: "The only way computer models have managed to simulate an entire shutdown of the current is to magic into existence millions of tonnes of fresh water and dump it in the Atlantic. It's not clear where that water could ever come from, even taking into account increased Greenland melting."
Uncertainties in climate change models mean that the overall impact on Britain of a slowing down in the current are hard to pin down. "We know that if the current slows down, it will lead to a drop in temperatures in Britain and northern Europe of a few degrees, but the effect isn't even over the seasons. Most of the cooling would be in the winter, so the biggest impact would be much colder winters," said Tim Osborn, of the University of East Anglia climatic research unit.
The final impact of any cooling effect will depend on whether it outweighs the global warming that, paradoxically, is driving it. According to climate modellers, the drop in temperature caused by a slowing of the Atlantic current will, in the long term, be swamped by a more general warming of the atmosphere. "If this was happening in the absence of generally increasing temperatures, I would be concerned," said Dr Smith. Any cooling driven by a weakening of the Atlantic current would probably only slow warming rather than cancel it out all together. Even if a slowdown in the current put the brakes on warming over Britain and parts of Europe, the impact would be felt more extremely elsewhere, he said.
NOAA ATTRIBUTES RECENT INCREASE IN HURRICANE ACTIVITY
TO NATURALLY OCCURRING MULTI-DECADAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY
http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories...allstorms3.jpgNov. 29, 2005 — The nation is now wrapping up the 11th year of a new era of heightened Atlantic hurricane activity. This era has been unfolding in the Atlantic since 1995, and is expected to continue for the next decade or perhaps longer. NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. These cycles, called “the tropical multi-decadal signal,” typically last several decades (20 to 30 years or even longer). As a result, the North Atlantic experiences alternating decades long (20 to 30 year periods or even longer) of above normal or below normal hurricane seasons. NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming.
http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm
Link to the rest of the article.
The warming has caused cooling and that cooling will cause super-cooling...after we become super-cool, the global warming will push the glaciers down and we will achieve a very scary level...super-luke-warm...after that, all hell breaks loose.
"Global warming is right behind us."
Tyler,
I wonder if NOAA will take this new report that I posted and rethink this "natural occurence"? It seems to me that the gulf Stream weakening can cause this natural occurance to become the norm. With the stream not pulling the heated water out of the lower Atlantic and returning the cooler water, wouldn't we would have a build up of heated water, more salinity possible, so forth and so on? I think so and nor do I think this is a "natural" cycle. But of course everything is okay and no one should be concerned.
while i think it is an enormous waste of money, their permanent measurement stations will give us a better idea of what's really going on. in a typical study, when you only have 5 data points and one varies greatly from the others, you would simply throw out the variant sample, attributing it to error of some kind, and try to collect much, much, more data. but when you are hell-bent on proving something, you will read way too much into a single variant data point.
I read somewhere or heard somewhere that there was a theory that the North Pole was the South Pole and vice versa. The reason I'm stating this is because someone has said something in another post about while the ice at the North Pole is decreasing, the ice at the South Pole is increasing. This theory was proposed as to why so many animals were caught in the ice age and frozen instantaneously. As you know, there are many specimens of creatures that were frozen in seconds resulting in them not deteriorating. The scientists were wondering what may have caused that sudden freezing to occur. One theory, as I recall, was that one of the poles developed more ice than the other and caused it to be heavier which then caused the earth to rotate like a ball that is lopsided causing the instantaneous freezing. If I remember correctly, there theory was that warming had actually caused many of the glaciers to melt on one of the poles causing them to break free and move down.Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnylightnin
Why did I post this to you? Well, you make me chuckle with some of your posts, in a logical tongue in cheek manner. And, well, you mentioned something about glaciers moving down. And finally, I've been waiting for weeks to tell this story and you happened to be the unfortunate one I've chosen to quote.
Weathermen cannot predict the weather accurately next week. I'm certainly not going to listen to what they think is going to happen in 99 years.
The more I think about it, the more I think that forecasters are wrong so much in the short term, in which they are accountable, that they are focusing on the long term, in which they are not.
I'm honored.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirtydawg
Never heard such a silly theory, but I would think animals being frozen in ice probably had more to do with a supervolcano exploding sending ash high into the atmosphere or a larger meteor colliding with the earth doing the same thing that would cause rapid cooling of the earth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirtydawg
Long live the Global warming and Best Thread ever II thread!
Clinton is right on with this.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051209/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl
And blow jobs are not sex.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawgbitten
Yeah, ole' Bill is really known for the truth. Isn't it interesting that it was HIS administration that originally refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty. ( At least he did something right..) and now that the "hot air" wind is blowing in another direction he does a typical dimmie round about and takes the other position.