THE GULF STREAM AND GLOBAL WARMING
Mike Priaro, P. Eng.
First uploaded October 28, 2018
The Gulf Stream is a surface warm water current that flows from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico and up the US east coast before crossing the Atlantic to northern Europe. It is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
As it flows north it evaporates, increasing in salinity and density, and cools causing it to sink into the deep ocean and circulate back south.
When it moves faster, more tropical warmth gets stored in the deep ocean. When it's slower, less warmth is stored in the deep and some land surface temperatures increase.
During the 1975-1998 AMOC minimum, more heat entered the atmosphere and global temperatures went up. When the current accelerated in the mid-1990s-early 2000s, it coincided with a slowdown in global warming.
A decline in AMOC flow since 2004 may be leading to higher global temperatures.
Those are the conclusions of Prof. Tung et al of the Ocean University of China who reconstructed the flow of the AMOC over the past 70 years and found a natural pattern with declines, flat periods and increases over the decades. https://lnkd.in/gU-putj
However, the AMOC is just one of a half-dozen major ocean circulation systems. To study just one part of one aspect of Earth's climate system over only 70 years and conclude its natural cyclical changes are responsible for changes in global temperatures is simply bad and irresponsible science.
Mike Priaro
Calgary
403-281-2156
