In the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream carries 30 times more water than all the world’s rivers combined.
A set of new studies finds that an arm of the Gulf Stream, the warm currents flowing up past Norway before veering toward Iceland may be slowing due to a vast ‘cold blob’ of melting Greenland ice.
Moises Velasquez-Manoff and Jeremy White report in the New York Times that the consequences of this, “could include faster sea level rise along parts of the Eastern United States and parts of Europe, stronger hurricanes barreling into the Southeastern United States, and perhaps most ominously, reduced rainfall across the Sahel, a semi-arid swath of land running the width of Africa that is already a geopolitical tinderbox...
“‘We’re all wishing it’s not true,’ Peter de Menocal, a paleoceanographer and president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said of the changing ocean currents. ‘Because if that happens, it’s just a monstrous change.’”
Check out the Gulf Stream in motion in the beautifully designed interactive Atlantic Ocean map pictured above and get a heads up on what else may be in store for us here.
Image: Large scale ocean circulation arrow from The Relationship Between U.S. East Coast Sea Level and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: A Review by Christopher M. Little et al.