Does history really repeats itself? Should we go back to the ice age again? The ocean current that balms the Western Europe’s climate and pampers the habitants there is claimed to be stuttering. It is raising fears that it might eventually fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age! A study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic provides the dramatic finding. There is a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream, the finding found. The slow-down has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming. The phenomenon will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
PredictionsSome climate models predict that global warming could lead to a shutdown later this century. It was the shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in Western Europe, probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London.
Via: New Scientist