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

Record July and the Gulf Stream

23/8/2015

July 2015 was the hottest month since records began in 1880 which is a huge worry but within that there is an anomaly in the North Atlantic.
The temperature map from NOAA shows a cool patch in the North Atlantic where the Gulf stream travels towards the UK..
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany says that the speed of the Gulf Stream has slowed by 15-20% and this is likely caused by the big increase in melt water coming from Greenland. This melt water has increased substantially recently and has reached 13,000 cubic kilometres between 1970 and 2000 and has likely increased since then.
Fresh water floats over the salty sea water and has the ability to stop the normal sinking of salt laden sea water when the Gulf Stream reaches the Arctic region off Norway.
Sudden changes in climate can have unforeseen outcomes which must be a worry for the UK

3 Comments

Will Bingham

24/8/2015 01:52:55 am

Not unforeseen. Now would be a good time to dig holes before the ground gets too hard.

Bob Bristow

24/8/2015 03:37:24 pm

The window for keeping the global land-ocean surface temperature anomaly rise under +2°C is very nearly closed, Paris is our last chance and there are not too many signs for optimism.

In 2005 an international symposium on stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations – called avoiding dangerous climate change took place, at the invitation of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and under the sponsorship of the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), at the Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom, on 1-3 February 2005. The conference brought together over 200 participants from some 30 countries, mainly scientists.

Back in 2005 the annual mean atmospheric CO2 level at Mauna Loa, Hawaii was 379.80. among the symposium summary was this bombshell..

“There is a range of emission pathways that could be followed theoretically to avoid different temperature levels. Probability analysis provides a quantitative estimate of the risk that a particular temperature level would not be exceeded. For example, limiting warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels with a relatively high certainty requires the equivalent concentration of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm. Conversely, if concentrations were to rise to 550ppm CO2 equivalent, then it is unlikely that the global mean temperature increase would stay below 2°C. Limiting climate change to 2°C above pre-industrial levels implies limiting the atmospheric concentration of all greenhouse gases. Based on new insights into the uncertainty ranges of climate sensitivity, a stabilisation at 450 ppmv CO2 equivalent would imply a medium likelihood (~50%) of staying below 2°C warming.”

This year Earth will be around a mean of 400ppm CO2, so according to the ten year old symposium we are now crossing the high certainty boundary to medium certainty. That is not good at all.

The scientific findings presented at the Exeter conference have also been published in a book –
Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.

The book has been prepared by an editorial board led by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change) and contains extended and peer-reviewed versions of the papers presented at the conference. As the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has said, “this book will serve as more than a record of another conference or event. It will provide an invaluable resource for all people wishing to enhance global understanding of the science of climate change and the need for humanity to act to tackle the problem.

http://www.eeg.tuwien.ac.at/eeg.tuwien.ac.at_pages/publications/pdf/NAK_BOO_2006_01_summary.pdf

Bob - I sincerely appreciate the work you do in bringing the science clearly to the public, I just hope that we can advert going beyond 2°C, as you know, the lives of our future generations and the lives of all the other creatures that co-inhabit our world are at stake here.

Bob Bingham

25/8/2015 01:11:53 am

Hello Bob. There is an army of concerned citizens who are working to persuade their governments to make changes to energy sources. Our New Zealand government is working on the supposition that we already have a lot of renewable energy and can therefore do the absolute minimum. As we don't burn much coal to make electricity the only area left is with transport and we need to do much more in that direction. I shall be giving Fraser Whineray of Mighty River Power some support. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/71317040/mighty-river-power-boss-fraser-whineray-says-more-could-be-done-to-seize-electric-car-opportunity

Bob Bingham Blog page.

Record July and the Gulf Stream

Leave a Reply.

Bob Bingham

Archives

Categories