We have already gotten used to warm winters and hot summers, and therefore the snowy spring and the cold summer of 2017 in Russia contrast very much against this background. Scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warn that winters in Europe could get colder. The disruption of water circulation in the oceans and the slowdown of the Gulf Stream can lead to hard-to-calculate, but unequivocally negative consequences for the entire planet.
The Gulf Stream slowed down
The main conclusion of this study is that the circulation of water in the oceans is slowing down and that one of the consequences of this may be a slowing down of the Gulf Stream. This in turn will lead to many disasters. Cold winters in Europe and a severe rise in water levels that will threaten major coastal cities on the US East Coast, such as New York and Boston. According to their data, the Gulf Stream, which brings a mild climate to northern Europe and favorable conditions for residents of the southeastern United States, is slowing down at the fastest rate in the last 1,000 years.
Professor Stefan Ramstorff:
It is immediately apparent that one particular area in the North Atlantic has been cooling for the last hundred years, while the rest of the world has been warming. We have now found compelling evidence that the global pipeline has indeed been weakening over the last hundred years, especially since 1970.
The data obtained by scientists confirm that as global temperatures rise due to climate change, areas warmed by the Gulf Stream show a drop in temperature, especially in winter. An influx of warm water from the equator that travels across the ocean, passing through the Gulf of Mexico and then up the west side of Great Britain and Norway, contributes to the warm climate in Northern Europe. This makes winter conditions in much of northern Europe much milder than they would normally be, protecting these regions from large amounts of snow and ice during the winter months.
Now, researchers have found that the water in the North Atlantic Ocean is colder than predicted. computer models previously. According to their calculations, between 1900 and 1970, 8,000 cubic kilometers entered the Atlantic Ocean from Greenland. fresh water. In addition, the same source "provided" an additional 13,000 cubic kilometers between 1970 and 2000. This fresh water is less dense than the salty ocean and therefore tends to float near the surface, upsetting the balance of the vast current.
In the 1990s, circulation began to recover, but the recovery proved to be temporary. Now there is a new weakening, possibly due to the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
At the moment, the circulation is weaker by 15-20% than one or two decades ago. At first glance, this is not so much. But on the other hand, according to scientists, there has not been anything like this on Earth for at least 1100 years. It is also worrying that the weakening of the circulation is happening faster than the pace predicted by scientists.
Researchers believe that the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300 was due precisely to the slowing down of the Gulf Stream. In the 1310s, Western Europe, judging by the chronicles, experienced a real ecological catastrophe. The traditionally warm summer of 1311 was followed by four gloomy and rainy summers of 1312-1315. Heavy rains and unusually harsh winters have killed several crops and frozen orchards in England, Scotland, northern France and Germany. In Scotland and northern Germany, viticulture and wine production then ceased. Winter frosts began to hit even northern Italy. F. Petrarch and J. Boccaccio recorded that in the XIV century. snow often fell in Italy.
In 2009-2010, American scientists have already recorded a sudden rise in the water level in the Atlantic off the east coast of America by 10 cm. Then the current weakening of the circulation was just beginning. In case of its sharp weakening, the water level can rise by 1 meter. Moreover, we are talking only about the increase due to the weakening of circulation. To this meter should be added the rise of water, which is expected from global warming.
Scientists have calculated that the warm current of the Gulf Stream is so powerful that it carries more water than all the rivers of the planet combined. Despite all its power, it is only one, albeit a large, component of the global process of thermohaline, that is, temperature-salt water circulation. Its key components are located in the North Atlantic - where the Gulf Stream flows. Therefore, it plays such an important role in shaping the climate on the planet.
The Gulf Stream carries warm water north into colder waters. At the Great Newfoundland Bank, it passes into the North Atlantic Current, which affects the weather in Europe. This current moves further north until the cold, salty waters go deeper due to their increased density. Then the current at a great depth turns around and moves in the opposite direction - to the south. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current play decisive role in shaping the climate, because they carry warm water north and cold water south to the tropics, thus constantly mixing water between ocean basins.
If too much ice melts in the North Atlantic (Greenland), then the cold salt water is desalinated. Reducing the salt content of water reduces its density and it rises to the surface. This process can slow down and eventually even stop the thermohaline circulation. What can happen in this case, director Roland Emmerich tried to show in the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow (2004). In his version, a new ice age has begun on Earth, which provoked catastrophes and chaos on a planetary scale.
Scientists reassure: if this happens, it will not be very soon. However, global warming is indeed slowing down the circulation. One of the consequences, Stefan Ramstorff notes, could be a rise in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the United States and much colder winters in Europe.
On April 20, 2010, 80 kilometers off the coast of Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, owned by British Petroleum (BP), which was developing the Macondo field. The oil spill that followed the accident (explosion and fire) became the largest in the history of the United States, turning the accident into one of the largest man-made disasters in terms of negative impact on the ecological situation and the environment.
Italian physicists conducted an experiment during which they used a bath with cold water and gave color to the warm jets of water. It was possible to see the boundaries of cold layers and warm jets. When oil was added to the bath, the boundaries of the layers of warm water were violated and the current vortex was effectively destroyed. This is exactly what happened in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf Stream. The river of "warm water" that flows from the Caribbean, reaches Western Europe less and less, is dying because of Corexit (COREXIT-9500) - a toxic chemical that the Obama administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the disaster resulting from the explosion of the drilling platform in April last year. As a result, according to some reports, about 42 million gallons of this dispersant were poured into the Gulf of Mexico.
Corexit, as well as several million gallons of other dispersants, were added to more than 200 million gallons of crude oil that had been pouring over several months from a well drilled by BP at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. So it was possible to effectively hide most of the oil, sinking it to the bottom, and hope that the BP concern will be able to seriously reduce the size of the federal fine, depending on the size of the oil disaster. Currently, there are no ways to effectively "cleanse" the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, oil reached the east coast of America and then flowed into the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. There, too, there is no way to effectively clean up the oil at the bottom.
The first to report the shutdown of the Gulf Stream was Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, a theoretical physicist at the Frascati Institute in Italy (Rome). He said that due to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, glaciation "is inevitable in the near future." The scientist had previously collaborated with a group of specialists involved in monitoring what was happening in the Gulf of Mexico for several years. His information is contained in a journal article dated June 12, 2010 and is based on satellite data from CCAR Colorado, agreed with US Navy NOAA. This live satellite map data was later altered on the CCAR server and the scientist claims it was a "falsification".
Dr. Zangari argues that a huge amount of oil covers such vast areas that it has a serious impact on the entire thermoregulation system of the planet by destroying the boundary layers of the warm water flow. As a result, in the fall of 2010, the pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico ceased to exist, and satellite data from that period clearly showed that the Gulf Stream began to break apart and die about 250 kilometers east of the coast of North Carolina, despite the width of the Atlantic Ocean at this latitude exceeding 5000 kilometers.
Due to the interest aroused by the topic of the "disappearance" of the Gulf Stream on the Internet, the Russian scientist Professor Sergei Leonidovich Lopatnikov, author of two monographs and 130 publications in the field of physics, acoustics, geophysics, mathematics, physical chemistry, Economics, wrote the following on his blog:
About the Gulf Stream and Winter Weather The thermohaline vascular system, where warm waters flow over cooler waters, has a great impact not only on the ocean, but also on the upper atmosphere up to seven miles high. The absence of the Gulf Stream in the eastern part of the North Atlantic disrupted the normal course of atmospheric flows in the summer of 2010, resulting in unheard of high temperatures in Moscow, droughts and floods in Central Europe, the temperature rose in many Asian countries, there were massive floods in China, Pakistan and other Asian countries.
So what does all this mean? This means that in the future there will be violent mixing of the seasons, frequent crop failures, an increase in the size of droughts and floods in various parts of the Earth. In fact, the creation by BP of an “oil volcano” at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico killed the “pacemaker” of the global climate on the planet. Here is what Dr. Zangari says about it:
I know well the history of our atmosphere, climate, and even what they were like when there was no man yet. For example, hundreds of millions of years ago, the temperature was 12-14 degrees higher than today. Of course, there is something to reproach a person with... Over the past fifty years, industry has worked very intensively, emitting a huge amount of greenhouse gases, which, of course, affected the climate. That is, there is definitely an anthropogenic contribution. But climate is a very subtle phenomenon. In addition to high temperatures, there were also glaciations on Earth. And they occur at concentrations of greenhouse gases below two hundred parts per million. Then the so-called "white earth" appears. So, now we are closer to this “white earth” than to the hottest anomalies that have been in the history of our planet.
Everything that has happened will lead to corresponding consequences for human civilization, to ecological collapse, global famine, deaths and mass migration of the population from areas unsuitable for human habitation. A new ice age can start at any time, and it will start with a glaciation in North America, Europe and Asia, perhaps. A new ice age could kill 2/3 of the human race in the first year if it starts quickly. If everything happens slowly, then most likely, about the same amount of the population will die, but just within a few years!
What do we have at the entrance? During the Gulf Stream, warmer water enters. A fraction of a degree, but it matters. What do we have as a result? Western winds prevailing in the middle of the Atlantic bring warmer and more humid air to southern Europe than before. The so-called "hot glass" over the flat territory of the Russian Federation in the summer he could not break through and dumped moisture in the upper reaches of European rivers (in the mountains).
More importantly, these are lenses made of heavier oil fractions “submerged” with the help of chemical binders hundreds of meters deep. These inclusions prevent convection heat transfer between the bottom and surface layers of water. At the same time, they were "drowned and okay." But because of this, there was a change in the viscosity of water saturated with oil emulsion to great depths due to the treatment of the oil release with the binder Corexit.
As Dr. Zangari notes, "The real concern is that there is no precedent in history for the sudden complete replacement of a natural system with a broken, man-made system." And worst of all, real-time satellite data is clear evidence to Zangari that a new artificially created world has emerged in the Gulf of Mexico. natural system. Within this new and unnatural system, such parameters as viscosity, temperature and salinity have changed radically. sea water. This stopped the run of the Annular Current in the Gulf of Mexico that had lasted for millions of years.
The opinion expressed by Dr. Zangari with mathematical precision and illustrated by the dynamics of satellite imagery is better to read several times:
Measurements of the temperature of the Gulf Stream in 2010 between the 76th and 47th meridians show that it is 10 degrees Celsius colder than it was during the same period last year. Accordingly, we can talk about the presence of a direct causal relationship between the stop of the warm Annular Current in the Gulf of Mexico and the fall in the temperature of the Gulf Stream.
Assumption of Consequences
Meteorologists warn: the planet Earth has entered the so-called small ice age, which may be followed by a big one - this is when even dinosaurs began to die out on Earth. The first alarm bell rang in 2013, when the never-freezing Black Sea was covered with ice. Well, after the beautiful blue Danube and even the Venetian canals froze in Europe, a real panic began in general. What is the reason for such anomalies and how it can turn out for our planet?
Due to the fact that the warm Atlantic Gulf Stream is changing its direction, around 2025, a sharp cooling will most likely begin on Earth. In a matter of days, the Arctic Ocean will freeze and turn into a second Antarctica. After that, a thick layer of ice will cover: the North, Norwegian and even the Baltic Seas. The navigable English Channel and even the never-freezing European rivers Thames and Seine will freeze. Forty-degree frosts will begin in European countries. Cold winds will bring heavy snowfalls from the North Atlantic - as a result, all European airports will stop their work, power supply to many cities will stop. In just a few weeks, all of Europe will plunge into pitch darkness, and then turn into an icy desert. All this, according to scientists' forecasts, is a very real scenario of what could happen in just 10 years. The earth will be on the brink of disaster.
Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm - in two years the Gulf Stream deviated from its previous direction by 800 kilometers and now, instead of moving to the northeast (to heat Europe), the warm current turns to the northwest - towards Canada.
If this deviation turns out to be permanent and the Gulf Stream never again goes to the North Atlantic, a global catastrophe will happen on Earth. The Gulf Stream will melt the ice of Greenland; a huge mass of water will pour onto the mainland and will actually wash away all of North America from the face of the Earth, but this is not the worst thing. All this will set the earth's plates in motion, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, tsunamis will begin on the planet. According to scientists, if this happens, two-thirds of the population will die out almost instantly. In the Eastern Hemisphere: in Europe, Asia and even Africa, a new ice age will begin, while the Western Hemisphere will literally be washed away by huge masses of water.
But the worst will happen later. According to scientists, 10 years after the Gulf Stream changes its direction, the current may stop for good. To confirm or disprove this assumption that the Gulf Stream really stops, Canadian researchers went on an experiment - they developed a special dye, poured it into containers and immersed it in the Gulf of Mexico to a depth of 900 meters. There, at a given depth, the dye containers explode, spraying the contents hundreds of meters away. A colored mass of ocean water spills over the Gulf Stream. It's unbelievable, but the suggestion that the Gulf Stream has stopped has been confirmed. Colored water, indeed, did not move towards Europe. Instead, the current has deviated 800 kilometers to the west and is now moving towards Greenland. That is why an anomalous warming is coming in Canada and instead of frost there, for a winter already, you can observe a temperature of about +10 degrees and rains.
For the preparation of the article used:
- an article by Sergei Manukov, posted on the site expert.ru,
- materials from the site
Separate currents in the oceans are combined into systems included in the general basin cycle. The most famous is the Gulf Stream. This name is translated into Russian as the Current from the Gulf. It has been preserved from those distant times, when it is believed that the current arises as a stream of water rushing from the bay through the Strait of Florida to. It is now known that only a small fraction of the Gulf Stream's waters are carried out of the bay. The current emerging from there is now preferred to be called the Florida. The ocean current, reaching the latitude of Cape Hatteras on the coast, receives a powerful inflow from. This is where the actual Gulf Stream begins, a mighty "river in the ocean", going to a depth of 700 - 800 m and reaching a width of 110 - 120 km. One more feature of the Gulf Stream was noted: upon entering the ocean, it does not deviate to the right, as it should be in the Northern Hemisphere under the influence of the Earth's rotation, but to the left! This is the result advanced level ocean in its subtropical part. The average temperature of the surface layers of the current is 25 - 26 ° (at a depth of about 400 m - only 10 - 12 °). However, in the Gulf Stream, at a distance of the length of the ship's hull, there are large temperature differences, reaching 10 °, and the change in color and transparency of sea water occurs literally before our eyes.
In the surface layer of the current, a core of high-temperature waters is usually found, most pronounced at the very surface of the ocean, and a core of high-temperature waters with a center at depths of 100–200 m. This feature can be traced down to the Big Bank. Thus, the notion of the Gulf Stream as a very warm current passing through colder waters is valid only for the surface layer, but even in it the warmest waters are only a few degrees higher than the surface temperature of the waters of the Sargasso Sea.
The surface velocities of the Gulf Stream itself can reach 2.0 - 2.6 m/s. Even at depths of about 2 km, they are still significant: 10 - 20 cm/s. At the exit from the Strait of Florida, the current capacity is 25 million m3/s (and this value is more than 20 times the flow rate of all the rivers of the planet); after the joining of the Antilles Current (from the Sargasso Sea), the flow capacity increases to 106 million m/s.
And now such a mighty stream rushes to the northeast to the Great Newfoundland Bank. From here, the Gulf Stream, as well as the Slope Current that separates from it, turns south, joining the North Atlantic gyre. And across the ocean, to the east, towards the North Atlantic current rushes, which is sometimes considered part of the secondary oceanic.
E. Volodin, Ph.D. Phys.-Math. Sciences.
Rumors persist about the weakening of the Gulf Stream, which is either due to an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, or due to a strong melt arctic ice, and that it threatens us with unheard-of climatic catastrophes, up to the onset of a new ice age. Letters come to the editorial office with a request to clarify whether the warm current will really disappear soon. Evgeny Volodin, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, answers questions from readers Researcher Institute of Computational Mathematics RAS.
Rice. 1. Anomaly (deviation) of surface temperature in September-November 2010 compared to September-November 1970-2009. Data from NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction, USA).
Rice. 2. Difference in ocean surface temperatures between June 2010 and June 2009. GODAS data.
Rice. 3. Difference in ocean surface temperatures in September-November 2010 and September-November 2009. GODAS data.
Rice. 4. Current velocities in June 2010 at a depth of 50 m, according to GODAS data. The arrows indicate the direction, the color - the magnitude of the speed (m / s).
The Gulf Stream is a warm current in the Gulf of Mexico that goes around Florida, flows along the east coast of the United States to about 37 degrees N. and then breaks away from the coast to the east. Similar currents exist in the Pacific Ocean - Kuroshio, and in the Southern Hemisphere. The uniqueness of the Gulf Stream lies in the fact that after breaking away from the American coast, it does not turn back to the subtropics, but partially penetrates into high latitudes, where it is already called the North Atlantic Current. It is thanks to him that in the north of the Atlantic the temperature is 5-10 degrees higher than at similar latitudes in the Pacific Ocean or in the Southern Hemisphere. For the same reason, the Northern Hemisphere as a whole is slightly warmer than the Southern.
The root cause of this uncommonness of the North Atlantic is that a little more water evaporates over the Atlantic Ocean than falls in the form of precipitation. Over the Pacific, on the other hand, precipitation slightly outnumbers evaporation. Therefore, in the Atlantic, the water on average is somewhat saltier than in the Pacific Ocean, which means that it is heavier than the fresher Pacific Ocean, and therefore it tends to sink to the bottom. This is especially intense in the North Atlantic, where salt water is also made heavier by cooling on the surface. In place of the water that has sunk into the depths, water from the south comes to the North Atlantic, this is the North Atlantic Current.
Thus, the causes of the North Atlantic Current are global, and they are unlikely to be significantly affected by such a local event as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the most pessimistic estimates, the area of the oil slick is one hundred thousand square kilometers, while the area of the Atlantic Ocean is slightly less than one hundred million square kilometers (that is, a thousand times larger than the slick). According to the NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction, USA) atmospheric reanalysis data - synthesized data from satellites, ground-based observation stations, soundings, "assimilated" by the atmospheric dynamics model (atmospheric model of NCEP's Global Forecast System - GFS), with the warm currents of the North Atlantic, there is nothing to worry about until it happened. Take a look at the map compiled from this data (Figure 1). In September-November 2010, the deviation of surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in that 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 does not exceed one degree Celsius. Only in the northwest of the Atlantic, in the region of the cold Labrador Current, do these anomalies reach two or three degrees. But such a magnitude of seasonal anomalies is quite common and is observed in a particular region almost every year.
Reports that the Gulf Stream between the 76th and 47th meridians in 2010 became colder by 10 degrees Celsius are not confirmed either. According to GODAS data (Global Ocean Data Assimilation System - a system for assimilation of all available observational data - satellites, ships, buoys, etc. - using an ocean dynamics model), the average ocean surface temperature in June 2010 is between about 40 and degrees W.L. was lower than in June 2009, by only one or two degrees, and only in one place - by almost three degrees (Fig. 2). But such temperature anomalies are quite within the framework of natural variability. Usually they are accompanied by "deviations" of a different sign in neighboring areas of the ocean, which happened in the summer of 2010, according to GODAS data. So if they are averaged over the entire North Atlantic, then the average temperature deviation was close to zero. In addition, such phenomena usually live for several months, and in autumn the negative anomaly was no longer observed (Fig. 3).
The existence of the Gulf Stream is also well confirmed by GODAS data on horizontal current velocities at a depth of 50 m, averaged over June 2010. A map compiled from this data (Figure 4) shows that the Gulf Stream, as always, flows through the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida and along the east coast of the United States. Then it breaks away from the shore, becomes wider, at the same time the speed of the current drops (as it should), that is, nothing unusual can be traced. Approximately the same, according to GODAS, the Gulf Stream flows in other months of 2010. Note that 50 m is the most characteristic depth at which the Gulf Stream is best seen. For example, surface currents may differ from those at a depth of 50 m, most often due to the influence of the wind.
However, there have been cases in history when events occurred similar to those described in the “horror stories” that are now widespread. The last such event occurred about 14,000 years ago. Then the ice age ended, and on the territory North America from the melted ice a huge lake was formed, dammed by a glacier that has not yet melted. But the ice continued to melt, and at some point the water from the lake began to flow into the North Atlantic, freshening it and thereby preventing the water from sinking and the North Atlantic Current. As a result, it became noticeably colder in Europe, especially in winter. But then, according to existing estimates, the impact on the climate system was huge, because the flow of fresh water was about 10 6 m 3 /s. This is more than an order of magnitude higher than, for example, the current runoff of all Russian rivers.
Another important point that I would like to emphasize is that the average seasonal anomalies of atmospheric circulation in temperate latitudes depend to a very small extent on ocean surface temperature anomalies, including such large ones as were observed this summer in European Russia. Specialists in seasonal weather forecasting argue that only 10-30% of the deviations from the “norm” of the average seasonal temperature at any point in Russia are due to anomalies in ocean surface temperature, and the remaining 70-90% are the result of natural variability of the atmosphere, the root cause of which is unequal heating high and low latitudes and it is almost impossible to predict which for a period of more than two or three weeks (see also "Science and Life" No. 12, 2010).
That is why it is wrong to consider the observed weather anomalies in Europe in the summer of 2010 or in any other season as the result of only the influence of the ocean. If this were the case, seasonal or monthly weather deviations from the "norm" would be easily predicted, since large anomalies in ocean temperature, as a rule, are inertial and live for at least several months. But so far, no forecasting center in the world has been able to make a good seasonal weather forecast.
If we talk specifically about the causes of the anomaly in the summer of 2010 in Russia, then it was caused by the interaction of two randomly coinciding factors: a blocking anticyclone, which caused air transport to central regions Russia mainly from the east-southeast, and soil drought in the Volga and Cis-Urals, which allowed the spreading air not to waste heat on the evaporation of water from the surface. As a result, the increase in air temperature near the surface turned out to be truly unprecedented for the entire observation period. However, the probability of occurrence of a blocking anticyclone and soil drought in the Volga region depends little on anomalies in ocean surface temperature, including in the Gulf Stream region.
In Western Europe, as well as on the east coast of the United States, the climate is quite mild. So on the coast of Florida, the average water temperature is very rarely below 22 ° Celsius. This is during the winter months. In summer, the air heats up to 36°-39° Celsius with humidity reaching 100%. This temperature regime extends far to the east and north. It covers the states: Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, and North and South Carolina.
All these administrative entities lie in an area of humid subtropical climate, where the summer average daily temperature does not fall below 25 ° Celsius, and in the winter months it drops to 0 ° Celsius very rarely.
If you take Western Europe, then the Iberian, Apennine and Balkan Peninsulas, as well as the entire southern part of France, are located in the subtropical zone. The summer temperature in it fluctuates between 26°-28° Celsius. In winter, these figures drop to 2°-5° Celsius, but almost never reach 0°.
In Scandinavia, the average winter temperature ranges from minus 4° to 2° Celsius. In the summer months it rises to 8°-14°. That is, even in the northern regions, the climate is quite acceptable and suitable for comfortable living.
The Gulf Stream
This temperature grace takes place in a vast region for a reason. It is directly connected with the Gulf Stream ocean current. It is he who forms the climate and gives people the opportunity to enjoy warm weather almost all year round.
The Gulf Stream is a whole system of warm currents in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. Its full length covers a distance of 10 thousand kilometers from the sultry coast of Florida to the ice-covered islands of Svalbard and New Earth. Huge masses of water begin their movement in the Strait of Florida. Their volume reaches 25 million cubic meters per second.
The Gulf Stream moves slowly and majestically along the east coast of North America and crosses 40°N. sh. Near the island of Newfoundland, it meets the Labrador Current. The latter carries cold waters to the south and causes warm water flows to turn east.
After such a collision, the Gulf Stream splits into two currents. One rushes north and turns into the North Atlantic Current. It is this that forms the climate in Western Europe. The remaining mass reaches the coast of Spain and turns south. Off the coast of Africa, it meets the North Trade Wind Current and deviates west, ending its journey in the Sargasso Sea, from which it is within easy reach of the Gulf of Mexico. Then the cycle of huge masses of water is repeated.
This has been going on for thousands of years. Sometimes a mighty warm current weakens, slows down, reduces heat transfer, and then cold falls to the ground. An example of this is the Little Ice Age. Europeans observed it in the XIV-XIX centuries. Every heat-loving inhabitant of Europe has experienced on his own skin what a real frosty snowy winter is.
True, before that, in the VIII-XIII centuries, there was a noticeable warming. In other words, the Gulf Stream was gaining strength and giving off a very large amount of heat into the atmosphere. Accordingly, on the lands of the European continent, the weather was very warm, and snowy cold winters have not been observed for centuries.
Today, the mighty warm currents of water also affect the climate as they did in former times. Nothing has changed under the sun and the laws of nature have remained the same. That's just a man in his technical progress walked very far. His relentless activity triggered the Greenhouse Effect.
The result was the melting of the ice of Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. Huge masses of fresh water poured into salt water and headed south. Today, this situation is already beginning to affect the mighty warm current. Some experts predict the imminent stop of the Gulf Stream, since he will not be able to cope with the influx of alien waters. This will entail a sharp cooling in Western Europe and on the east coast of North America.
The situation was exacerbated by the largest accident at the Tiber oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. Under water in the bowels of the earth, geologists have found huge reserves of oil, estimated at 1.8 billion tons. Experts drilled a well, the depth of which was 10,680 meters. Of these, 1259 meters were in the ocean water column. In April 2010, a fire broke out on an oil platform. It blazed for two days and claimed the lives of 11 people. But it was, though tragic, but a prelude to what happened after that.
The burnt platform sank, and oil began to flow out of the well into the open ocean. According to official sources, 700 tons of oil per day entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. However, independent experts named a different figure - 13.5 thousand tons per day.
The oil film, huge in its area, fettered the movement of Atlantic waters, and this, accordingly, began to negatively affect heat transfer. Hence there was a violation in the circulation of the air currents of the Atlantic. They no longer had the strength to move east and form the usual mild climate there.
The result was a terrible heat wave in Eastern Europe in the summer of 2010, when the air temperature rose to 45° Celsius. Provoked similar winds from North Africa. They, not meeting any resistance on their way, brought a hot and dry cyclone to the north. He hovered over a vast territory and stayed above it for almost two months, destroying all life.
At the same time, terrible floods shook Western Europe, as the heavy, moisture-filled clouds coming from the Atlantic did not have enough strength to break through the dry and hot front. They were forced to dump tons of water on the ground. All this provoked a sharp rise in the level of rivers and, as a result, various catastrophes and human tragedies.
What are the immediate prospects, and what awaits old Europe in the near future? Experts say that the cardinal climate change will begin to be felt in 2020. Western Europe is waiting for a cooling and rising sea levels. This will provoke the impoverishment of the middle class, as their money is invested in real estate, which will plummet in value.
This will create political and social tensions in all sectors of society. The consequences of this can be the most tragic. It is simply impossible to predict something specific, since there are many scenarios for the development of events. One thing is clear: hard times are coming.
The current of the Gulf Stream, today, thanks to global warming and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, has practically closed in a ring and does not provide sufficient thermal energy to the North Atlantic Current. Accordingly, the air flow is disturbed. Over the European territory, completely different winds begin to dominate. The usual climatic balance is disturbed - this is already noticeable with a simple eye.
In such a situation, anyone can feel a sense of anxiety and hopelessness. Of course, not for the fate of hundreds of millions of people, since this is too vague and unclear, but for the specific fate of their relatives and friends. But to despair, and even more so to panic, is premature. How it will actually be - no one knows.
The future is full of surprises. It is entirely possible that global warming is not global warming at all. This is a normal rise in temperatures within the climate cycle. Its duration is 60 years. That is, for six decades the temperature on the planet has been steadily increasing, and for the next 60 years it is slowly decreasing. The beginning of the last cycle dates back to the end of 1979. It turns out that half of the way has already been passed and only 30 years are left to endure.
The Gulf Stream is too powerful a stream of water to simply change direction or disappear like that. There may be some failures and deviations, but they will never turn into global and irreversible processes. There are simply no prerequisites for this. At least these days, they don't.
Yuri Syromyatnikov
Warm Gulf Stream- this is a huge current in the Atlantic Ocean, with a fairly high temperature. More specifically, the Gulf Stream is a current that flows along the entire east coast of North America, stretching from the Straits of Florida to the Newfowlland Bank. And in broad sense, The Gulf Stream is the common name for the system of warm currents in the North Atlantic Ocean.
This is a rather powerful jet stream, which has a width of about 70-90 km and a depth almost to the very bottom. The maximum current velocity varies from a few meters per second at the surface to 10-20 centimeters at the bottom. The total flow of water by the Gulf Stream is 50,000,000 m3 every second, which is more than all the existing rivers combined. Only thanks to the warm Gulf Stream, all European countries adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean have a milder climate than the same Southern Siberia, located at the same latitude.
At the same time, the winds passing through this current bring such an amount of heat to Northern Europe that in winter it is about 15-20 degrees higher than it should be. That's why seaports in Norway, as well as our port in Murmansk, are not covered in ice all year round. During cold war, and especially acute relations with the Old World, the United States developed European freeze plan. According to their idea, it was necessary to adjust the current so that the Gulf Stream sailed back along the east coast, and did not cross the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing came of this, and the current gives warmth, as before.
Remarkably, the first mention of this trend was the story of Christopher Columbus, then the Europeans paid attention to it. He encountered it in 1492 when he sailed to the lands of the New World. The next was the conquistador, the Spaniard Ponce de Leon, who made an attempt to pass through the Gulf of Mexico, past peninsula florida, and discovered an amazing thing, his ship was under full sail, and was moving in the opposite direction with a fair wind.
Previously, sailors have repeatedly noted a similar fact, not finding an explanation for it, but indicated on the maps the fact that the current helps to return home to Europe faster than to deal with this obstacle on the way to America. But scientific research The current was first taken up by an American scientist, and later by US President Benjamin Franklin, in 1770. It was he who noted its approximate course along the entire length of the path, and gave the name now known to the whole world.
