http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog.html

Mass population movement

23/9/2015

With all the refugee problems in Europe due to the wars in Syria, Palestine and Iraq we should be thinking about our own situation in the South Pacific.
When many of the Pacific Islands flood due to climate change Australia and New Zealand we will be the nearest stable country and we will not be able to stand idly by and watch these people lose their island homes. It would be a natural shared responsibility for New Zealand be responsible for the Polynesians and Australia for the Micronesians and the Melanesians.

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Melting Antarctica. Totten glacier.

20/9/2015

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A recent sea-born scientific expedition to the Totten glacier in East Antarctica has discovered that the glacier is thinning from the bottom at the rate of 10 metres per year. This unexpected discovery is similar to the situation in West Antarctica and shows that the whole of the Antarctic ice is under threat. The oceans have been absorbing 93% of the heat from the Sun and it is beginning to make itself felt.

Sea water at the surface of the Southern Ocean is -1.8 C and if it becomes colder it would freeze and become ice. The sea water at greater depths is much warmer and this is the problem. As the winds in the Southern Ocean speed up it is bringing this warmer water up from the deep and this warm water although still very cold at 0.9C is entering valleys in the sea bed and reaching right under the ice shelf.

As the ice shelf thins it becomes vulnerable and large amount break off and no longer act as a buffer to hold the land ice sheets in check. It will take a few years for these huge glaciers to start moving, the way that they have in West Antarctica and Greenland, but it has started.

We only need one metre of sea level rise to have grave economic impacts to the USA and Europe and none of this recent research was included in the IPCC report so we are moving into a critical climate change stage. While politicians are arguing about climate change and how to cheat the system nature is relentlessly moving ahead.

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Gulf Stream slowing and Greenland melting.

7/9/2015

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The world temperature map from NASA shows a large cold patch in the North Atlantic right in the path of the Gulf Stream and this comes at a time when the Gulf Stream is slowing. The Gulf Stream is a major driver in the world circulation of the thermohaline system which distributes heat and nutrients around the world.

When the system is working normally the warm water of the Gulf Stream steadily evaporates as it travels North and the water grows heavier as this action leaves the salt behind. When the stream reaches the Arctic this sea water freezes and again only the fresh water freezes and the remaining salt water becomes very heavy with excessive salt and sinks into the deep ocean driving the system.

What appears to be happening is that an excessive amount of water has been melting from Greenland and flooding across the North Atlantic, mixing with the salt water and making it less dense so that it will not sink so fast. This mechanism has been known to stop the Gulf Stream completely in the past and also was mentioned by Al Gore in his famous video ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Although the theory has been known for some time, nobody really believed that it would happen in our lifetime.

Clearly this would have huge implications for the UK as it relies on the Gulf Stream to avoid the cold weather that it’s high northern latitude would normally dictate but the water has been 2C cooler this summer and it has been a poor summer. Let’s hope that things recover as a quick change in temperature can be disastrous for any country.

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Bob Bingham Blog page.

Mass population movement

Melting Antarctica. Totten glacier.

Gulf Stream slowing and Greenland melting.

Bob Bingham

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