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from the don't-care-I-live-in-amundsen-scott-base dept.
The research co-led by Drs. Christelle Not and Benoit Thibodeau from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong, highlights a dramatic weakening of the circulation during the 20th century that is interpreted to be a direct consequence of global warming and associated melt of the Greenland Ice-Sheet. This is important for near-future climate as slower circulation in the North Atlantic can yield profound change on both the North American and European climate but also on the African and Asian summer monsoon rainfall. The findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Geophysical Research Letters.
[...] Interestingly, the research team also found a weak signal during a period called the Little Ice Age (a cold spell observed between about 1600 and 1850 AD). While not as pronounced as the 20th century trend, the signal might confirm that this period was also characterized by a weaker circulation in the North Atlantic, which implies a decrease in the transfer of heat toward Europe, contributing to the cold temperature of this period. However, more work is needed to validate this hypothesis.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/tuoh-oci112318.php
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @03:01PM (12 children)
And plunges Europe into colder temperatures. That'll teach those global-warming-denying-Europeans a lesson
/s
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Sunday December 02 2018, @03:16PM (11 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @04:10PM (6 children)
Yea, mini ice ages are great for lifeforms. That is why the beavers are trying to prevent one from happening by releasing the arctic methane.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:04PM (5 children)
I thought they release beaver methane?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:09PM (4 children)
It is not a joke. Beavers are engineering the arctic to release twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/beavers-accelerate-thawing-arctic-s-permafrost [sciencemag.org]
They probably have magnetite in their brains that allows them to sense the solar cycle. They know cycle 24 was weak and cycle 25 is looking weak too. Humans used to use this to predict famines too before they lost their connection to nature.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday December 02 2018, @10:49PM (1 child)
Can you explain in a bit more detail? What did we used to have as a species that connected us to nature? (for instance).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @11:45PM
This is parallel reconstruction, they actually used sunspot data:
https://biblehub.com/bsb/genesis/41.htm [biblehub.com]
The cross was originally a navigational tool, but eventually its symbolic meaning took over and its practical meaning was lost due cargo culting. This is much like how 'science' is being coopted by cargo culters today:
http://viewzone.com/crichton.html [viewzone.com]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @04:21PM (1 child)
Are you sure any creature on earth are aware of their place in nature? Perhaps they are merely conforming to existing sociological dogmas in their societies. Perhaps beavers have a system like capitalism that makes them do stuff they don't know why they are doing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @09:54PM
Yes, beavers are known as nature's ecological restoration agents. We would be wise to listen to the beavers. https://permaculturemag.org/2018/01/beavers/ [permaculturemag.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @05:18PM (2 children)
If it's happening to the the North Atlantic Circulation then it must be happening to the Global Circulation. I've been aware for a few years that the Gulf Stream has been weakening which means it must be happening to all the Western Boundary Currents.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 02 2018, @07:32PM (1 child)
Actually, the Gulf Stream feeds the North Atlantic - they aren't synonymous, but there is a lot of interdependence.
But, the weakening of the Gulf/Atlantic currents doesn't necessarily imply anything at all about any other currents. I also read an interesting article that was tangentially related. The ocean currents aren't always at the same depths. The article was examining the migrations of eels - I think they were Poland eels, or maybe Germany. Anyway, they couldn't account for the eels in some years, until they found that the currents run deep sometimes, and shallow other times. Since the eels depended on the currents to get from here to there and back again, they had to search deeper to find what they were looking for.
That of course leads me to wonder whether these researchers took account of depth.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 02 2018, @09:52PM
"That of course leads me to wonder whether these researchers took account of depth."
You're clearly out of yours. Your knowledge of Physical Oceanography is appalling. You might have been in the navy but you certainly were never an AG.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Sunday December 02 2018, @06:14PM
I don't know, if there is equal warming on the equator and on the pole then there is no change of the temperature *differential*, which is one factor taht "pumps" the atlantic around the Sargasso Sea [wikipedia.org].
But I've seen on heat maps that the temperatures on northern latitudes are going up much faster than anywhere else [wikipedia.org], so that would reduce the difference in temperature between equator and pole and would weaken the North Atlantic Current part of the Gulf Stream [wikipedia.org].