Gulf Stream slowing detected

[link to www.unknowncountry.com]

Scientists Confirm Unexpected Gulf Stream Slowing
09-May-2005


Gulf Stream
Scientists from Cambridge University have confirmed that the Gulf Stream is weakening, and this is likely to bring much colder temperatures to Europe within a few years. The weakening is significant: the Gulf Stream is flowing at a quarter of the strength that was present five years ago.
This is happening because gigantic chimneys of cold water that were sinking from the surface to the sea bed off Greenland have disappeared. These chimneys are the key engine of world climate as we know it today, and their disappearance signals the beginning of a great catastrophe.

This is the first research to show unequivocal evidence of the phenomenon, which was originally predicted in the Coming Global Superstorm, published in 1999.

In Superstorm and in the film based on it, the Day After Tomorrow, the event unfolds over the course of a week. The Cambridge scientists are predicting now that there will be clear water at the North Pole as early as 2020, and that temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by 5-8 degrees Celsius, from an average of 22 at present to 14 to 17 in the future. An average as low as 17 (62 Fahrenheit) will mean that the summer growing season will be catastrophically curtailed in Europe, leading to huge declines in production from one of the world´s primary surplus production zones.

It will also mean that winters similar to those in Finland will extend far south into France, and that there is a possibility that a series of "no-melt" summers across the northern latitudes could cause the reflectivity of the planet to increase to the point that new glaciation will begin.

The weakening of the Gulf Stream is destabilizing currents worldwide, and will lead to radical climate changes in other areas. The nature of these changes is not known, and the current US administration has blocked US environmental agencies from studying the phenomenon, so the severity of its effect in this country is not under study. However, it is likely that the eastern US and eastern Canada will experience climate change as radical as that in Europe, as the Gulf Stream drops south. At the least, food production and liveability in the eastern half of North America will be severely challenged.

Scientists are currently assuming that the Gulf Stream will slow and stop over a period of years, not suddenly, as predicted in Superstorm and portrayed in the Day After Tomorrow.

However, there is ample evidence that sudden and extreme changes have taken place worldwide in the past. Unknowncountry.com reported on this phenomenon in December of 2004 and earlier in [link to www.unknowncountry.com] of 2003.

There is a mechanism that changes a process of climate change that seems to be unfolding over a period of years into a violent event that takes just hours or days to develop, and then remains in a radically changed condition. This happened 5,200 years ago, as has amply been revealed in the fossil record.

Why it happened remains unknown, but it certainly had to do with the very sort of spiking of temperatures that the world has experienced over the past fifty years, and a reversal.

The changes that are taking place in the Gulf Stream are unstoppable. They will unfold. How that will happen, and whether or not the process will involve sudden and violent worldwide storms such as those that took place 5,200 years ago remains unknown.

It is, however, essential that planning for the change begin at once. At the least, the world faces dramatic economic upheavals and a decline in food production at a time when both energy and food needs are at the highest they have ever been in history.

So far, the only other media outlet that has picked up this story is the Sunday Times of Great Britain, and they have not provided the true perspective, or discussed the scale of the changes that are on their way. For the Times story, click here.