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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 05 2016, @05:45PM   Printer-friendly

Phys.Org is reporting on the results of a recent study by University of Washington oceanographers. The paper, published 28 July, 2016 in Geophysical Research Letters [abstract only, full text paywalled] details research pointing to a cause of the slowdown in the Atlantic Ocean circulation currents.

From the Phys.org article:

The ocean circulation that is responsible for England's mild climate appears to be slowing down. The shift is not sudden or dramatic, as in the 2004 sci-fi movie "The Day After Tomorrow," but it is a real effect that has consequences for the climates of eastern North America and Western Europe.

Also unlike in that movie, and in theories of long-term climate change, these recent trends are not connected with the melting of the Arctic sea ice and buildup of freshwater near the North Pole. Instead, they seem to be connected to shifts at the southern end of the planet, according to a recent University of Washington study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"It doesn't work like in the movie, of course," said Kathryn Kelly, an oceanographer at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory. "The slowdown is actually happening very gradually, but it seems to be happening like predicted: It does seem to be spinning down."

The study looked at data from satellites and ocean sensors off Miami that have tracked what's known as the Atlantic overturning circulation for more than a decade. Together they show a definite slowdown since 2004, confirming a trend suspected before then from spottier data.

[...] "It appears that this 10-year slowdown is not related to salinity," Kelly said. In fact, despite more ice melt, surface water in the Arctic is getting saltier and therefore denser, she said, because of less precipitation. "That means the slowdown could not possibly be due to salinity—it's just backwards. The North Atlantic has actually been getting saltier."

[More...]

Instead, the authors saw a surprising connection with a current around the southern tip of South Africa. In what's known as the Agulhas Current, warm Indian Ocean water flows south along the African coast and around the continent's tip toward the Atlantic, but then makes a sharp turn back to join the stormy southern circumpolar current. Warm water that escapes into the Atlantic around the cape of South Africa is known as the Agulhas Leakage. The new research shows the amount of leakage changes with the quantity of heat transported northward by the overturning circulation.

"We've found that the two are connected, but I don't think we've found that one causes the other," Kelly said. "It's more likely that whatever changed the Agulhas changed the whole system."

She believes atmospheric changes may be affecting both currents simultaneously.

"Most people have thought this current should be driven by a salinity change, but maybe it's the [Southern Ocean] winds," Kelly said.

The finding could have implications for northern European and eastern U.S. climates, and for understanding how the world's oceans carry heat from the tropics toward the poles.

Have any Soylentils noticed any effect from the current slowdown?


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday October 05 2016, @08:35PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @08:35PM (#410809) Journal

    However, in both cases the correct response to "fixing" immigration and refugees from flooding into your country is to care about the country they were fleeing.

    Perhaps you have a prescription for that?

    Every country has a collection of gut-wounded public servants and politicians that have fallen on their sword solving middle east problems. Gosh if only they had "cared"!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @10:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @10:55PM (#410868)

    Well lets be honest, a lot of the problems stem from greedy interests trying to control the black gold. The West did their best to undermine legitimate governments and install dictators that would give them what they wanted. Sure there are a lot of other problems, but Western interference has never been about helping, only controlling.

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday October 06 2016, @12:47AM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday October 06 2016, @12:47AM (#410890)

    Like Anon said, we share a large portion of the responsibility for the Middle East. Had we stayed out of it, or even just been more compassionate to the Palestinians (more aid and rebuilding), then maybe we wouldn't have our issues today. However, we are every bit the imperialists that we are claimed to be. Black GOLD. Texas Tea. That's why we "care".

    My idea? Well it's not a good one probably. It's so fucking bad that not only is their home a completely fucked up hell hole, they're leaving and fucking up others. I'm not referring to the refugees, but their ideology and terrorism.

    My two thoughts are for the world to cut its losses and bomb the Middle East until it's "silent" ever more, accompanied by the thought that we come in and rebuild under fire.

    Either solution is peppered with half-assed politicians that will constrain rebuilding efforts with "diplomacy" (corruption and who makes the money) and also constrain the military from implementing a "final solution" (noooo don't kill the peoples). We would have won Vietnam if we let the military do what it needed to do, but that wasn't a righteous activity by any stretch of the imagination so there was no support at home.

    Syria could be different and we could approach it with the idea that we kill everything breathing in Syria and just let expatriated Syrians flow back into the country. A lot easier to rebuild when nobody is left alive right? We can not shoot women and children to the best of our abilities, but we can damn well make sure that Assad is DEAD. We kill the remaining people in government, kill the higher ups, and decimate the military in to complete submission. Not like we haven't done that before, and we have pictures of Japan surrendering to us.

    In a way, what we care about is creating safe land for Syrians to live on, and that used to Syria. Making it "Great Again" is simply a matter of bullets pointed correctly and then actually fired.

    Palestine is easier since they're in a position to finally receive help, if only the world would give it. Iran may actually be able to be worked with, once Palestine is no longer a talking point beyond, "See how we brought peace?". Iraq is a cluster fuck, and they just need to go through their civil war that we engendered. Pakistan deserved to be invaded during Afghanistan, along with Saudi Arabia.

    Most of the Middle East is so fucked up just because they can use Palestine as an issue, and that's an issue we can actually remove with the appropriate political willpower and resources.

    It's Syria now, but if those problems get worse, or exacerbated by climate change, then we may find ourselves living with the people of the Middle East in our own backyards. I don't want to do that, and I don't think you want to either right?

    So either through destruction or creation, we need to handle the Middle East.

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