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Rocky Mountains Keep Europe Warm
fldvm writes "The Earth Institute at Columbia University says that the rocky mountains are more responsible than the gulf stream for mild winters in Europe. See the press release, or google cache. The long held assumption had been that the warm water of the Gulf stream makes Western Europe warmer than Canada and and other parts at the same latitude. The researchers said that with computer models they removed the Gulf Stream and Europe stayed warm but when they flattened the mountains over North America the Eastern US was warmer and Europe was colder. "
Leaving aside the headlines, the text of the press release reads "Research suggests..."
This is good work, and part of the huge and valuable process of improving our understanding of climate, but it's quite possible that some group will run a different computer model tomorrow and come up with the opposite result.
We'll know that climate modelling is starting to "get there" when they're able to make accurate predictions about the effects of things like volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations.
It sounds like this contradicts the role of the Gulf stream in controlling the onset of Ice Ages
in the popular climate models. Are these fact incompatible?
It is by coff... er, will, alone I set my mind in motion...
Anyone know how this affects the theroy that Global Warming, might shut down the Gulf stream and plunge the northern Hemisphere into more severe winters?
Before this finding about the Rockies: That theory about the Gulf Stream really sounds like wild speculation.
After this finding about the Rockies: That theory about the Gulf Stream really sounds like wild speculation.
Global warming is fairly strongly established at this point, but its actual effects -- even at macroscopic levels -- still remain terrifyingly unknown. Most scientists aren't managing much better than wild speculation. But it's all a moot question, since we get to find out through a nice fun emperical global experiment over the next thousand years!
We have no idea what large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will do to weather in Europe, the US, or anywhere else. We have no idea either what they will do to sea levels or plant life. But we do know that it is quite plausible that they will have big effects and that it is quite plausible that those effects won't be good. We also know that getting rid of excessive carbon dixoide from the atmosphere may take decades or centuries.
The conservative thing to do is to reduce our emissions to more historical levels which we know are safe, as opposed to engaging in a wild experiment on a global scale and see what happens.