Huge Arctic 'pool' could flush into Atlantic, alter weather

Huge Arctic 'pool' could flush into Atlantic, alter weather

www.msnbc.msn.com

A swirling pool of icy Arctic meltwater has the potential to flush quickly into the Atlantic Ocean and alter weather in Northern Europe, climate scientists reported Tuesday.

Located just north of Alaska and Canada, the vast pool's percentage of freshwater from rivers has grown by about 20 percent since the 1990s and that change in salinity level could impact ocean circulation and cause temperatures in Northern Europe to cool, the experts said.

That level of increase in Arctic freshwater...

(visit the link for the full news article)

An overdue wind shift will carry this pool, known as the Beaufort Gyre, into the North Atlantic. Its impact is unpredictable, but could cause "large regional changes." I would presume this would lead to colder weather for Northern Europe and some challenges to marine life dependent on the Gulf Stream bringing warm water into the area.

The cold fresh water in this gyre is less dense than the surrounding seawater and would most likely ride on top of it. This would mean cooler surface temperatures and possibly an interruption of the normal current cycle for the North Atlantic. Not a good thing for anyone but polar bears.

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Its not good when we have problems with these currents. they help to keep parts of europe warm. I live in nw scotland the last thing we need here is an ice age...

kx

Global Cooling now? For pete's sake make up your mind already.

Yes. I went there.

I believe the last ice age was caused in the same manner. something about a large amount of fresh water from the great lakes entering the atlantic abruptly stopping ocean currents

So another 'mini ice age' could be on the way, the UK has already experienced record ever low temperatures last winter.

Originally posted by inbound
I believe the last ice age was caused in the same manner. something about a large amount of fresh water from the great lakes entering the atlantic abruptly stopping ocean currents

I believe the last ice age created the Great Lakes with Glaciers that covered most of North America, I don't see how water from the Great Lakes could have entered the Atlantic when they didn't exist at the time.

Where are you getting your information?

We must NOT mix "climate" and "weather" !

The climate is a **general** "thing" all over the world.

The weather is a **local** thing, in small spots of the world.

Sooooo, the **climate** is warming, but the **weather** could
be colder in **some spots** of the world.

Blue skies.

I happened to be listening to an interview from 2002 last night talking about the Beaufort Gyre, since it is melting from underneath it could slide into the Atlantic and cause Ocean depths to rise anywhere from 300 to 600 feet which could put large parts of the Continents underwater. The Scientists at that time said that this is a very real possibility. What is going on now is very scary indeed, can you imagine the water destroying everything from the West Coast all the way to Utah, it could in fact split the United States in half and that is only the U.S., this could happen in all coastal area around the World, places like Japan wouldn't exist any longer.

WOW!! I was born in Inuvik, N.W.T. Canada, very near the Arctic Ocean, maybe 200 kilometers away (124 miles for you Americans!) I should ask some of my friends and family, still up north, if they heard anything about this! This thread deserves my flag! I will leave an update, if I hear anything else from my people in the Great White North!

Peace!

If the freshwater gyre were to leak into the Atlantic it could have similar effects to a Dangsgaard-Oescher event. This causes a brief (10 year) period of warming, followed by a prolonged period of Northern hemisphere cooling by 2 - 5 Celcius that could last 100 - 200 years.

See here for more info.


If a sufficient amount of freshwater enters the Atlantic to completly alter the thermohaline circulation (the circulation of water in the Atlantic), we could have a Heinrich type event that would have more severe effects and could reduce Northern hemisphere temperatures by 5 - 10 Celcius. Evidence suggests these events took place every 10 000 years during the last ice age and lasted for much longer periods of time.

A 'big freeze' known as the Younger Dryas that took place between 12 800 and 11 500 years ago is thought to have been caused by a Heinrich event.

Originally posted by Aquarius1
I happened to be listening to an interview from 2002 last night talking about the Beaufort Gyre, since it is melting from underneath it could slide into the Atlantic and cause Ocean depths to rise anywhere from 300 to 600 feet which could put large parts of the Continents underwater. The Scientists at that time said that this is a very real possibility. What is going on now is very scary indeed, can you imagine the water destroying everything from the West Coast all the way to Utah, it could in fact split the United States in half and that is only the U.S., this could happen in all coastal area around the World, places like Japan wouldn't exist any longer.

I think where this gets a little tricky is how closely do the evaporation rates of the glacier and it's water, correlate with the ocean(s) own evaporation into rain water. While yes if the melt off occured instantly you would be looking at perhaps that much displacement in the elevation of sea levels, but it's not likely to happen instantly.

As the ocean water evaporates distributing the water inland into the ground table, a large percentage of it is basically 'shifted' to a different storage point and mode in that process.

We know for instance that these glaciers/icebergs are melting from underneath and degrading significangtly, but how much of that has already been dispersed through the evaporation that occurs within the eco-system? How much has the water level raised world wide as a result.

Nor can we rule out how the human population ever increasing consumes water too.

I don't know if all the factors are really being measured and worked into the equation at this point.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

A climate out of balance... Ice, ocean, atmosphere. These three components constitute the health of the Arctic climate. At the heart of this system is one of the least studied bodies of water on the planet: the Beaufort Gyre, a slowly swirling bowl of icy water north of Alaska ten times the size of Lake Michigan.

Video:

icue.nbcunifiles.com...

Recent observations suggest that because of global warming, the natural rhythms of the Beaufort Gyre have been tipped out of balance. To find out what this means for the future of the Arctic climate, scientists from the United States, Canada, and Japan will set out every summer from 2003 to 2014 for month-long expeditions aboard the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. They are using an array of newly-developed instruments to measure the environment above, below, and within the floating icepack.

Link

If you go to the link there is more information, you could in fact go on a cruise with these scientists.

Thanks for the great replies and additions to this thread. I am no climatologist or weatherman, but I thought the story newsworthy. I appreciate the additional development.

Shaken and not stirred.

Toss a couple olives in and call it a day.

This is something none of us could actually prevent, so why worry, now Nuclear issues we have control over, just don't build them.

Mother nature is the ultimate force and trying to predict her is like men understanding women, not happening anytime soon.

Originally posted by Aquarius1
I happened to be listening to an interview from 2002 last night talking about the Beaufort Gyre, since it is melting from underneath it could slide into the Atlantic and cause Ocean depths to rise anywhere from 300 to 600 feet which could put large parts of the Continents underwater. The Scientists at that time said that this is a very real possibility. What is going on now is very scary indeed, can you imagine the water destroying everything from the West Coast all the way to Utah, it could in fact split the United States in half and that is only the U.S., this could happen in all coastal area around the World, places like Japan wouldn't exist any longer.

Wow, the Japan nuclear disaster is over and Utah survives, Who could ask for more.

Originally posted by Aquarius1

Originally posted by inbound
I believe the last ice age was caused in the same manner. something about a large amount of fresh water from the great lakes entering the atlantic abruptly stopping ocean currents

I believe the last ice age created the Great Lakes with Glaciers that covered most of North America, I don't see how water from the Great Lakes could have entered the Atlantic when they didn't exist at the time.

Where are you getting your information?

I believe that the poster may have been referring to the "little ice age" that happened a couple of centuries ago.
en.wikipedia.org...

there is more info out there other than the sometimes unreliable wikipedia. The Discovery channel once had a show on the mini ice age.

reply to post by Aquarius1


For a mechanism to explain these past cooling events, the focus is now on large freshwater intrusions into the region of the Nordic Seas, leading to the shutdown of the Ocean Conveyor which brings warmth to the north. One such event, which happened about 8,200 years ago, was probably triggered when a huge lake of freshwater burst through the remains of ice sheets bordering Hudson Bay. The surge flooded down Hudson Strait and out into the path of the Gulf Stream. Ocean sediments show a cooling at the same time, all around the north Atlantic. Today, the Ocean Conveyor could slow or stop either as a result of the steady freshening of the Arctic Ocean, or of a sudden massive influx of ice from the Greenland ice sheet

This is from the scientific american.

Hudson Bay- been awhile since I read the article.
Check your fire chief

Weather here in KY lately has been VERY VERY wierd

Nuclear threats, volcanos going off, ocean currents slowing down. I'm not suprised that shortly we'll soon experience an ice age. People in the Northern hemisphere, should migrate down south if you want to live in the next few years. Houses will disappear, underneath piles and piles of snow, people will be trapped in their homes from the massive snowstorms that will sweep across. Food prices will be very high, power outages, fuel shortages. Time to get your survival gear and know how to live out in the wild now.

Too bad that I live in Alberta so I would need to move. I will not be staying here.