Gulf Stream not Slowing Down

Apparently Dennis Quaid was wrong… the gulf stream is not slowing down as some climate change models (and over the top eco-adventure movies) predict.  Apparently the belief this might happen is a victim of the age old measurement error.  Initial measurements suggested the slow down.  It turns out over a longer period of time, there is no slow down, just an awful lot of variability from year to year.  Scientists are continuing to monitor the flow in attempt to collect more data to confirm these latest findings.  On top of that, they hope to figure out what causes the variability, which in and of itself is rather puzzling.

As an aside, what I find fascinating is the sheer magnitude of these sorts of issues.  We’re talking attempts to understand and predict phenomena on a global scale and time scales approaching geologic time.  That’s a seriously challenging task and more power to all the scientists out there trying to tackle it head on!


3 Replies to “Gulf Stream not Slowing Down”

  1. Jesse

    When you think about it, it is fairly presumptive of us to assume we can meaningfully discuss dynamic events on this temporal scale when we generally only have a couple of decades of significant data, maybe a century at best. BUT…that is what makes science fun and exciting! It is the discover and rediscovery as we create hypotheses and have the data to test them.

    We need a graphic of someone in a lab coat holding a sign that says “Have hypothesis, will test.”

  2. Marie Barrett

    November 2010. Has the gulf stream now stopped? The conditions in the UK this month suggest that it has but there is no official information.

  3. Jan-Erik Wahlberg

    It’s ok marie – the GS is still in operation, the winter you have is completely normal on a longer time scale. After the Medieval Warm period Britain experienced winter much like present.
    No standard climate exists on this or any other planet in our Solar System. If it gets cold, dress up and drink warm, if it gets too hot, cool yourself.

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