The Gulf Stream directly affects the climate in Western Europe. Scientists today are concerned about his behavior. If the Gulf Stream cools down or stops, it will have dramatic consequences.
It was already
The Gulf Stream was already cooling down and slowing down. Last time it was one of the reasons for the Little Ice Age, which began in 1312. According to the chronicles, medieval Europe experienced a real ecological catastrophe. Rainy summers gave way to cold winters, fruit trees were completely frozen in England, Scotland, northern France and Germany. In Germany and Scotland, all vineyards were frozen, which led to the end of the winemaking tradition. Snow began to fall in Italy, and severe frosts led to widespread famine.
According to experts, during the period from 1315 to 1317 due to the Great Famine in Europe, almost a quarter of the population died out. The least affected lands were south of the Alps and east of Poland. There the land continued to be fertile.
Between 1371 and 1791, there were 111 hunger years in France alone. In 1601 alone, half a million inhabitants died of hunger in Russia due to poor harvests.
The average annual temperature at this time of the Little Ice Age was the lowest in two thousand years.
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The stop of the Gulf Stream, together with other anomalous factors such as global warming and changes in solar activity, could lead to the most unpleasant consequences for Europe.
The reasons
Why did the Gulf Stream stop then? The fact is that under normal conditions off the coast of Greenland, warm water cools down, becomes denser and heavier, and goes deeper, forming a reverse countercurrent to the tropics.
But with an increase in global temperature, there is a rapid melting of glaciers and freshening of the World Ocean. An increase in precipitation makes a significant contribution to this process. As a result, the density and weight of the cooling Gulf Stream water decreases. As a result, it begins to "sink" much earlier than Greenland. As a result, Europe does not receive additional heat.
The Little Ice Age was preceded by massive volcanic eruptions. Today's agenda is global warming. It is this that leads to the melting of glaciers, desalination and cooling of water in the North Atlantic.
A threat
For the first time, they started talking about the threat of stopping the Gulf Stream in the early 2000s. In 2002, the American magazine Discovery came out with frightening headlines "Surprise of global warming - a new ice age", "Oceanographers have discovered a huge flow of fresh water in the Atlantic, formed as a result of melting ice at the pole. They warn that this stream could soon crush the Gulf Stream and doom North America and Europe to cold winters.”
Two years later, Sciense magazine published an article by the adviser to British Prime Minister David King, in which he called possible climate change the biggest problem, even more than international terrorism.
In the same 2004, the head of the Pentagon's Cumulative Evaluation Office, Andrew Marshall, based on the results of his department's work, published information about a possible disaster in Fortune magazine.
In his article, Marshall explains that the melting of the North and South Pole ice and glaciers around the world creates fresh water and this fact is at the heart of the global weather disaster that threatens us.
The oil threat
Not only natural factors but also human activities have a direct effect on the Gulf Stream. On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on a BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, almost 5 million barrels of oil got into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It took BP 152 days to concrete the well.
After this accident, which at first glance has a local character, articles by scientists began to appear that this disaster had already led to global consequences - the Gulf Stream changed direction and began to cool down.
However, the alarmists were quick to calm down. According to the atmospheric reanalysis data of NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction, USA), temperature fluctuations in the Gulf Stream were not anomalous. In September-November 2010, the deviation of the surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the part of the Atlantic where the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current pass, from the average value in the same months of 1970-2009 did not exceed one degree Celsius.
Should you panic?
It's too early to panic. Changes in the temperature of the Gulf Stream, despite all the flashy headlines, are still within normal limits. In 2010, reports began to appear in the press that the Gulf Stream between 76 and 47 meridians became colder by 10 degrees Celsius.
However, as follows from the GODAS1 (Global Ocean Data Assimilation System) data, the average ocean surface temperature in June 2010 at the indicated latitudes was lower than in June 2009 by only one to two degrees. Such temperature anomalies are well within the framework of natural variability.