well is it any surprise?
people have been saying this for years, now everyone runs that the sky is
falling...
"TonyZ2001" <tonyz2001@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040127120622.22756.00000785@mb-m18.aol.com...
Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
25 January 2004
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by
global
warming, new research suggests.
A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has
uncovered a change "of remarkable amplitude" in the circulation of the
waters
of the North Atlantic.
Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden "flips" of
the
climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The
development - described as "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change
ever
measured in the era of modern instruments", by the US Woods Hole
Oceanographic
Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream,
which keeps Europe's weather mild.
If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch
abruptly to
the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a
nightmare
scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below
-20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem
balmy by comparison.
A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden -
launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top
scientists
- warned last week that pollution threatened to "trigger changes with
catastrophic consequences" like these.
Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically,
cause a
devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings
as
much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of
Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as "likely". But
until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.
The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries
and
Acquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of
Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be
beginning to happen.
Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: "This has the potential
to
change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime.
Northern
Europe will likely experience a significant cooling."
Robert Gagosian, the director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's
leading oceanographic institutes, said: "We may be approaching a threshold
that
would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes.
"Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions
may
experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates." The
scientists, who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from
Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become "very much"
saltier
in the tropics and subtropics and "very much" fresher towards the poles
over
the past 50 years.
This is alarming because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty
water
sinking in the North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards,
forming the current.
The change is described as the "fingerprint" of global warming. As the
world
heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in
temperate
and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones
fresher.
Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10
hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that
similar
changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often
plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little
as a
decade.
The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way
as
"the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and
turns
on a light". Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts
for
decades at least, and possibly centuries.
When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it
brought
about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze
Britain
in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter
ones
to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not
sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the
globe,
including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the
Gulf
Stream affected currents worldwide.
Some scientists say that this is the "worst-case scenario" and that the
cooling
may be less dramatic, with the world's climate "flickering" between colder
and
warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this
would
be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.
27 January 2004 12:03
.
