Hello, thank you for reading this week’s Sunday post. Quite a number of climate news have come up in the last week, which we would like to have a look at. The first is about the Atlantic Meridional Oceanic Current (AMOC), a current that transports warm waters from the tropics to Europe and cold waters back. The AMOC redistributes heat, starting at the tropics. Warm temperatures warm up the water and increase salinity. As the current moves north, the water cools and sinks. Cold water already in Europe is pushed down to Antarctica where it participates in global currents. Therefore, if there were an issue with the AMOC, say, the water has warmed and become less salty in Europe and the AMOC stopped moving at all, other dependent currents could cease to move as well. Plus, without the influx of warm waters, parts of Europe and North American could freeze over. Indeed a recent study published in Nature Climate Change, collecting 8 measures of ocean circulation, has confirmed that the AMOC is currently weakening. It is unknown when the AMOC’s disruption past the point of no return has or will occur, but historical evidence suggests a severe consequence. About 12,000 years ago when the ice age appeared to be ending, the contents of a large glacial lake entered the Atlantic Ocean and stopped the AMOC. The result was 1000 years of extreme cold.
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March 2019
"There is nothing in which the birds differ more than man than the way that they can build and yet leave the landscape as it was before." |