Saturday, March 21, 2015

SALINITY AND SEA CHANGE

In my former career, the salinity of the seas was always an ever present factor, that you had to take into account, even when not particularly thinking of it.

This may account for a hypothesis that has come to mind, to account for the fact that despite one of the warmest years on record, the north east coast had record cold.  I suspect that the ice melt has left a layer of cold fresh water over the denser warm sea water of the Gulf Stream thus limiting the ability of that current from moderating the climate as in years past.  If New England has a cooler than usual Summer, it may further the hypothesis.  If it were to be true, that the ice melt has reached proportions high enough to affect the climate, it might bode really badly for our planet as a whole.

3 comments:

  1. Droughts, wildfires, and severe storms will be taking their toll this summer also. We are having the 3rd warmest March on record here in SoFla right now. It's going to get worse ....

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  2. Many ignorant people do not understand that "Global Warming" *means* "Climate Change", and areas of cooling are very much a part of that. One friend of mine has always dismissed "climate change" as just the crisis hoax du jour made up to manipulate the masses. As an example, he brought up the hysteria in the 70s about "acid rain" without the knowledge that YES - acid rain HAS adversely affected the planet and devastated ecosystems. I must admit that he IS influenced by the Republican ant-science propaganda.

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  3. You're absolutely right Jeanie! Every Ice Age has been ushered in by the effects of global warming. Natural cyclical warming takes place on a global scale (approx. every 26,000 years) due to the tilt of the earth's axis and precession, and the effect that has on the amount of polar sunlight. As the ice melts near the poles and fresh water enters into the ocean circulations, the circulation slows and almost ceases. Then what causes the ice sheets to form at the poles is not the temperature change, but rather the higher level of precipitation in these normally very dry polar regions. Antarctica is an extremely dry continent, yet contains 70% of the world's fresh water stored as ice. The increased precipitation causes an immense buildup of the ice sheets and periods of glaciation result. The last glacial period produced ice over a mile thick in northern Ohio. The ancient Teays River Valley in northwestern Ohio was over 800 feet deep at its deepest known point. That was filled in with glacial till ahead of several glacial advances and is now one of the flattest areas of Ohio. Most people have no realization of normal long-term weather patterns or of the effect of humans on those patterns.

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