iFire
03-November-2004, 03:16 PM
This article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3976629.stm) is talking about melting ice sheets and northern ireland.... I was wondering how right it is.
"Increasing melting of glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet could weaken or even stop the warm flow of the Gulf Stream.
Edited to fix bbcode
Swift
03-November-2004, 03:27 PM
The whole global-warming/climate-change debate is being conducted in several other forums and threads. If climate-change is correct, one of the scenarios is that the melting of the Artic and Greenland ice shields dumps a lot of fresh water into the Northern Atlantic. The lower density of the fresh water (compared to salt water) changes the ocean currents in the North Atlantic such that the Gulf Stream stops bringing warm water across the Atlantic and up to Northern Europe. Without that, the regional climate in those areas turns colder.
This (http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/climatechange_wef.html) website from Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute seems to have a good explanation.