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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The Gulf Stream, the warm current that brings the east coast of Florida the mixed blessings of abundant swordfish, mild winters and stronger hurricanes, may be weakening because of climate change.
Visible from the air as a ribbon of cobalt blue water a few miles off the coast, the Gulf Stream forms part of a clockwise system of currents that transports warm water from the tropics up the east coast and across the Atlantic to northwestern Europe. In the frigid climate near Greenland, the water cools, sinks and flows south again, rolling through the deep ocean toward the tropics.
This marine circulatory system has reached its weakest point in 1,600 years, recent studies show, having lost about 15% of its strength since the mid-20th century. Scientists disagree on whether climate change or natural cycles account for the slowdown. But a consensus has emerged that climate change will lead to a slower Gulf Stream system in the future, as melting ice sheets in Greenland disrupt the system with discharges of cold fresh water.
A weaker Gulf Stream would mean higher sea levels for Florida's east coast. It could lead to colder winters in northern Europe (one reason many scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming). And it could mean that a lot of the heat that would have gone to Europe would stay along the U.S. east coast and in Florida.
"If you slow down the sinking of water in the North Atlantic, that means you have a pileup of waters along the eastern seaboard of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico," said Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group. "That means that you have increased regional sea level rise just from that ocean circulation change. So that's not good for New York City, Norfolk or along Florida."
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(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday August 11 2019, @08:18AM (2 children)
10 billion tons is near enough to 10 cubic kilometres of ice.
The Greenland icesheet contains 2,850,000 cubic kilometres of ice. At that rate it will take 285,000 days to melt it all.
That's 780 years, ignoring that this is late in their summer and the fastest melt of the year.
Yes it's a problem, but we will have solved it one way or another long before then. Either by running out of fossil fuels, cheap renewables, extensive fission, viable fusion, geo-engineering, or something else. It is not something to panic over and do stupid stuff right now.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 12 2019, @03:11AM
The thing is that it seems to be accelerating. 10 tonnes today, maybe a 100 tonnes a day in a few years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @06:48PM
The problem is that the melting on its own (not counting other factors) will accelerate in the short term (where "short term" should be understood in geologic time scales, not human ones) as well as the long term. The reason is that as more of the ice melts the surface area to volume ratio increases, which causes even more ice to melt faster, until the ratio gets to its equilibrium again. The reason for this increased ablation is multiple, but includes crevasse air exposure, glacial ice's lower albedo, exposure of heating from below due to exposed geographic features, calving, groundwater percolation, etc.