The Gulf Stream plays a significant role in maintaining the climate of the US East Coast and Western Europe. “We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years.” The full study is Here
What will be the consequences to this?
Rise in sea levels on the east coast, reduced rain in the east coast, stronger storms, and more precipitation in Europe and the tropics. According to wiki.
I think it’ll also make some areas cold as fuck and probably heat up the gulf.
Western Europe will get pretty fucked without it, We’re much further north than people realise. The Netherlands is further north than Calgary, Canada
The consequences are unpredictable. More extreme weather is about the only certainty.
The energy of the heat transfer will not just be missing in Europe. It’ll also be in excess in the Caribbeans, perhaps creating stronger winds worldwide.
Imagine a house with water radiators, where you turn off the circulation pump while keeping the furnace on full blast. It’s gotta go somewhere.
Exactly this, and those two are actually connected: The more impulse you inject into a chaotic system its attractor changes to to switch more frequently between its basins. That was rather egg-headed.
To provide a bit of intuition: Imagine a pendulum with a magnet at the bottom, hanging over a plate with magnets embedded in it, individually attracting the pendulum. Start the pendulum with a very light swing and it’s going to visit one magnet, probably circle a bit around it, switch to another, then probably back to the first, then maybe to a third, then back again. Now start the pendulum with a larger swing and it’s going to switch between pairs of states way more often as there’s plenty of energy to escape each magnet’s attraction, switching to another, it’s also going to visit more magnets.
Why? Well, consider the extreme cases: Practically zero impulse means that the pendulum will visit the magnets on its path towards hanging straight down, then get stuck on one (becoming non-chaotic and that, in our analogy, would be the heat-death of the universe, don’t worry about it). The other extreme case would be to start the pendulum at a 90 degree angle or so, it will move right through all magnets on its way to the other side, be deflected a bit, then come back and take a slightly different path.
Now, to make this more accurate: Imagine the pendulum with a little rocket motor on it, that is, it doesn’t just stop moving on its own, each magnet is a weather pattern, “rain there, wind from the north there, sunny elsewhere”. Now imagine that we’re increasing and increasing the output of that rocket. That’s climate change: Previously rare patterns become more likely and the majority of them aren’t nice.
Britain and Iceland are utterly fucked.
The good news is that Iceland won’t have to go around apologizing for its name anymore.
Greenland still will be inaccurate though, unless the Arctic decides to just melt.
At this point i would honestly just shrug it off, what else is new lol
So’s Norway - quite a few places on the west coast (the most inhabited non-Oslo part of the country) rely on the fact that the gulf stream keeps them unusually warm for their latitude
I’m already seeing things that would normally grow fine out in the garden suffer from abnormally late and early frosts and mild summers. Rip my tomatos and onions. Everyone’s complaining about 20+ degree springs in the mainland while I’m screaming that it’s still snowing in late May.
Oof, I’m sorry to hear about your veggies :(
I hope it doesn’t collapse, it would mean a lot of displaced people and loss of life.
Maybe the warming and freezing will cancel out and the much smaller islands that will be left after the sea levels rise will still be temperate and worth living on.
Edit: This is not an “I’m alright, Jack” comment. I’d rather this wasn’t even a vague possibility and that the planet wasn’t warming out of control.
Maybe, but food and water will be extremely scarce. We can’t all just up and move. You and I will almost certainly die of starvation.
East coast of Canada and US will become arid. Caribbean will become hotter and storms will become more severe. Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, and Norway will be substantially colder (compare latitude of UK with Northern Canada) and with less precipitation. Basically, everywhere that relies on warm tropical moist air currents will drastically change.
Europe is at the latitude of Canada, it lacks Canada’s climate gradient because of the Gulf stream
We 'bouta see Siberia stretch its way to the Elbe!
Welp, at least we’ll get to see snow again before we drop
It will have to be renamed to the Gulf Trickle.
We unfuck ourselves like we always do.
But first, a whole lot of nothing….
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“Am I a joke to you?” - Nuclear power in Europe.
Nuclear plants need water to cool. This would also make Western Europe drier.
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That’s just Germany. I don’t think the anti-nuclear sentiment is that popular elsewhere. Finland just started a new reactor, granted we began bulding it already back in 2005.
France is still gangster with it. But the rest of Europe pretends that it’s greener to buy oil from Russia.
It’s not green enough for the ecofascists who’d rather have coal than nuclear, but we still have nuclear.