Really Abrupt Climate Change Really Happened
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08. 5.08
Lets finally give Roland Emmerich some credit; climate chaos and change actually does happen in real time. In the autumn 12,679 years ago, the Younger Dryas cold period swept in during the space of a year.
According to Discovery News, a team from the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, believes such a quick, profound change in climate could only have been brought about by a shift in winds across the northern hemisphere.
Michael Reilly writes: "Today prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere above the tropics tend to blow from the southwest to the northeast. Air that flows over Texas soon crosses the Atlantic and winds up over Norway.
As it travels the air passes over the Gulf Stream, a warm ribbon of water pouring northward from the tropics. The balmy air brings heat to Europe, which otherwise would be chilly. "
"The same was probably true just before the Yonger Dryas set in. But as the vast Ice Age glaciers retreated, their melt water flowed into the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The injection of fresh water made the sea easier to freeze, and a new skin of ice began advancing south.
The warm conveyor belt of Gulf Stream waters soon ebbed to a trickle. And as the sea ice advanced, the winds shifted into a west-east pattern. Within a year the breezes that warmed Europe had vanished." ::Discovery News
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This doesn't give me much hope! But I do find it very interesting and I'm sure something like this will happen again
My favourite wind-related terror is that half of the nutrients that keep the Amazon alive are blown out of one dry lakebed in Africa, the Bodele Depression in Chad. 30 million tonnes blow in from there each year. If the wind patterns change, the Amazon will die.
give Roland Emmerich some credit? I think not. His 'science' was not even worthy of the Hollywood movie he junked it into.
The Yonger Dryas set in quickly due to a huge melt water release from the interior of Canada into the north Atlantic. The huge amount of Cold freshwater remained at surface and changed the gulf stream. This particular situation is not going to reoccur now.
Michael Reilly should do his homework and tell the whole story. So should Lloyd Alter
If the problems are complex, global and mutually related, then our response/reaction should be complex and global too.
Desert Ice Project - the possible solution.