The ocean currents are changing, with major implications for climate around the world. Yet our new article published in Nature Sustainability suggests most governments are not preparing for this possibility. Of 91 national adaptation plans submitted to the U.N. climate convention, only two even mention that key Atlantic current, and neither sets out concrete action in response to its possible collapse.
But coriolis effect is the main force that drives them?
No, heat is, the coriolis effect is how an object moving through different rotational contexts inevitably leads to rotational motion.
Well ok, coriolis and centrifugal force keeps the storms on Saturn moving, forming the hexagon at the pole. Quite likely that this is a significant part of the fluids on earth moving too, no?
Day after tomorrow? Guess i better start stockpiling supplies…
Serious question from an ignorant person, how tf do we affect ocean currents? Doesn’t that have more to do with gravity and the rotation of the earth?
It’s the ice melting. When the Atlantic current gets to the Arctic it’s extremely salty and sinks to the bottom. That’s one of the primary engines for that current.
When the ice melts it dilutes the salt and so it no longer has the salinity to sink. That would make it stop!
It is a dynamic system with many variables, yes those set up the broad conditions but the geography and role of wind as well as crucially less saline water in the north atlantic creates a very nuanced and sensitive conveyor belt, far more than you might think when people describe it as a current.
Warm salty water flows north in the Gulf Stream, and then sinks when it cools in the North Atlantic (because saltier water is denser). Once it sinks, it flows back south along the bottom of the ocean.
Cold fresh water entering the North Atlantic due to ice melt from Greenland disrupts that process. The faster Greenland’s ice cap melts, the slower the current gets.
If it stops entirely, heat stops getting transported by the Gulf Stream and northwestern Europe (especially Britain) starts looking more like Alaska.
Phew. That’s thousands of miles away. 😅😶
