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In the Financial Times...
Gulf Stream at slowest pace for 1,000 years
Research published this week suggests climate change is slowing the ocean current, which carries warm water to Europe, more dramatically than expected. Using sediment data and temperature records to map historical trends, a study in Nature Geoscience found the Gulf Stream system, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), was travelling at its slowest rate in the last millennium.
“This is highly likely to be caused by our greenhouse gas emissions because there is no other plausible explanation for this slowdown,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the authors and head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “It is exactly what the climate models have been predicting for decades.”
The Gulf Stream is a huge ocean current that carries warm water from the tropics up the east coast of North America. The current — which carries more than 100 times the flow of the Amazon River — then cools and sinks around Greenland, carrying cooler water back south deep in the ocean.
Gulf Stream at slowest pace for 1,000 years
Research published this week suggests climate change is slowing the ocean current, which carries warm water to Europe, more dramatically than expected. Using sediment data and temperature records to map historical trends, a study in Nature Geoscience found the Gulf Stream system, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), was travelling at its slowest rate in the last millennium.
“This is highly likely to be caused by our greenhouse gas emissions because there is no other plausible explanation for this slowdown,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the authors and head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “It is exactly what the climate models have been predicting for decades.”
The Gulf Stream is a huge ocean current that carries warm water from the tropics up the east coast of North America. The current — which carries more than 100 times the flow of the Amazon River — then cools and sinks around Greenland, carrying cooler water back south deep in the ocean.
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