«Greenland ice takes on a new role in the climate change story, not just indicating change and contributing to sea level rise, but possibly playing an important role in destabilizing regional if
not global ocean circulation that naturally exchanges heat north - south,» said Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, and a study co-author, in an email to Mashable.
Not exact matches
He believes that no one has thought of combining the two theories before because it's
not an intuitive idea to look at how the effects of changing patterns of
ocean circulation, which occur on time scales of thousands of years, would effect
global silicate weathering, which in turn controls
global climate on time scales of 100s of thousands of years.
The Isthmus of Panama plays an outsized role in
ocean circulation and may be a reason that our planet currently undergoes ice ages, so the new theory could rewrite
not just the history of continents and biology, but also
global climate.
Climate scientists would say in response that changes in
ocean circulation can't sustain a net change in
global temperature over such a long period (ENSO for example might raise or lower
global temperature on a timescale of one or two years, but over decades there would be roughly zero net change).
A water based system doesn't achieve much, as the
oceans participate in weather and climate, but aren't the primary driving forces, which are
global atmospheric
circulation patterns and greenhouse gases etc..
Nevertheless, the risk of triggering
ocean circulation changes as a result of
global warming can
not be ruled out at present (which is why you use the word «probably»), and it needs to be studied and discussed.
Changes in the Arctic affect the rest of the world,
not only in obvious ways (such as the Arctic's contribution to sea - level rise), but through the Arctic's role in the
global climate system, its influence on
ocean circulation, and its impacts on mid-latitude weather.
If somehow and I can't possibly imagine how, there was a huge increase in
circulation between the surface and the deeper layers of the
ocean, that would be disastrous for
global temperatures but
not upwards but downwards!
A water based system doesn't achieve much, as the
oceans participate in weather and climate, but aren't the primary driving forces, which are
global atmospheric
circulation patterns and greenhouse gases etc..
The deep
ocean and surface water don't overturn because of differences in density, so the exchange is via
global circulation.
What you call an «
ocean pump» is
not in fact a pump, but is a current that is part of what some call the
global thermohaline
circulation.
The changing phases of Atlantic hurricane activity are
not completely understood; but there appears to be a link to fluctuations in the thermohaline
circulation, the
global pattern of
ocean currents which in western Europe appears as the Gulf Stream.
Although previous studies have offered a general
global overview of water
circulation between the
oceans and land, this traditional two - region model does
not take into account the considerable precipitation that occurs over tropical coastal regions, including the Indonesian maritime continent, the Indian subcontinent, and the Bay of Bengal.
The interesting thing from a scientific perspective is that specifying the surface temperature in this region seems to anchor the coupled atmosphere /
ocean circulations in a way that
not only gives a better simulation of
global average surface temperature, but also provides better simulations of the variability of key regional
circulation features.
MOC stands for Meridional Overturning
Circulation, and although it refers to the same global pattern of ocean currents («conveyor belt») as the thermohaline circulation, this story shows why actually MOC is the more accurate name, as it is not just... Continu
Circulation, and although it refers to the same
global pattern of
ocean currents («conveyor belt») as the thermohaline
circulation, this story shows why actually MOC is the more accurate name, as it is not just... Continu
circulation, this story shows why actually MOC is the more accurate name, as it is
not just... Continue reading →
By examining the spatial pattern of both types of climate variation, the scientists found that the anthropogenic
global warming signal was relatively spatially uniform over the tropical
oceans and thus would
not have a large effect on the atmospheric
circulation, whereas the PDO shift in the 1990s consisted of warming in the tropical west Pacific and cooling in the subtropical and east tropical Pacific, which would enhance the existing sea surface temperature difference and thus intensify the
circulation.
«The authors write that «the notorious tropical bias problem in climate simulations of
global coupled general
circulation models manifests itself particularly strongly in the tropical Atlantic,»... they state that «the climate bias problem is still so severe that one of the most basic features of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean — the eastward shoaling thermocline — can not be reproduced by most of the IPCC assessment report models,... as they describe it, «show that the bias in the eastern equatorial Atlantic has a major effect on sea - surface temperature (SST) response to a rapid change in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AM
circulation models manifests itself particularly strongly in the tropical Atlantic,»... they state that «the climate bias problem is still so severe that one of the most basic features of the equatorial Atlantic
Ocean — the eastward shoaling thermocline — can
not be reproduced by most of the IPCC assessment report models,... as they describe it, «show that the bias in the eastern equatorial Atlantic has a major effect on sea - surface temperature (SST) response to a rapid change in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning
Circulation (AM
Circulation (AMOC).»
Seen from this perspective, it comes as no surprise that
global models fitted to reproduce
global circulation can
not reproduce monsoons (land -
ocean interactions) and vice versa.
Regional
circulation patterns have significantly changed in recent years.2 For example, changes in the Arctic Oscillation can
not be explained by natural variation and it has been suggested that they are broadly consistent with the expected influence of human - induced climate change.3 The signature of
global warming has also been identified in recent changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a pattern of variability in sea surface temperatures in the northern Pacific
Ocean.4
Climate scientists would say in response that changes in
ocean circulation can't sustain a net change in
global temperature over such a long period (ENSO for example might raise or lower
global temperature on a timescale of one or two years, but over decades there would be roughly zero net change).
And if the «extra heat» is being stored in the
oceans, why is it that if you do a little research into thermohalene
ocean circulation they talk about it slowing down because of
global warming,
not speeding up?
One can
not develop a useful model of what drives
global ocean circulation, he says, without understanding what is happening at the scale of a cubic centimeter.
Here, we present an explanation for time - invariant land — sea warming ratio that applies if three conditions on radiative forcing are met: first, spatial variations in the climate forcing must be sufficiently small that the lower free troposphere warms evenly over land and
ocean; second, the temperature response must
not be large enough to change the
global circulation to zeroth order; third, the temperature response must
not be large enough to modify the boundary layer amplification mechanisms that contribute to making φ exceed unity.
The medieval warm period and little ice age (whther they are local or
global phenomena) are believed to be associated with thermohaline
circulations in the atlantic; correct simulation of such long term internal oscillations in an
ocean basin requires long term simulations for the
ocean for which we don't really have any observational constraints.