World Ocean beautiful and mysterious phenomenon of our planet. It contains a lot of unsolved, interesting and unusual things. One such amazing phenomenon is the warm Gulf Stream. What is it and why does it exist? Scientists already have answers to these questions.
Warm Gulf Stream This is a current in the Atlantic Ocean that begins near the Bahamas and ends its path near Europe and becomes the North Atlantic Current. Gulf Stream amazing phenomenon. Firstly, it is warm, and secondly, the Gulf Stream warms eastern Europe with its waters. It creates a warm climate in Eastern Europe: It is thanks to him that deciduous forests and even palm trees grow here, and the tundra does not lie there.
Why does the Gulf Stream exist? The thing is that hot and cold water Atlantic Ocean form a kind of conveyor belt. Hot equatorial waters rise to the top and form a current, and when they reach the end of the path, they cool. At the same time, they sink down into the water column and move back to the beginning of the flow. This is how the warm Gulf Stream exists.
Some scientists claim that the Gulf Stream is slowing down its waters, and some that it has stopped completely. It's hard to figure out who's right right now, but the Gulf Stream does have several reasons to slow down.
The first one global warming. Glaciers are melting rapidly, diluting the salty ocean water with their fresh water. A decrease in salinity disrupts the balance of the Gulf Stream. The second reason is the very large amount of oil that was spilled in Gulf of Mexico. This also affects it, disrupting and slowing it down.
Stopping the warm Gulf Stream carries many dangers: cooling of Europe, climate disruption, the emergence of an ice age. It plays a huge role in the life of our planet.
Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream powerful warm Atlantic current. Usually the meaning of the Gulf Stream is used in two senses. The first refers to the Gulf Stream itself, an ocean current along the eastern coast of North America with a width of up to 90 kilometers and a speed of up to several meters per second. The strength of the Current from the bay can be traced at depths of up to 1.5 kilometers. Gulf Stream in a broad sense - the entire system warm currents in the North Atlantic, the core and main driving force of which is the Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream is formed in tropical latitudes, in the Caribbean Sea. It is preceded by the Yucatan Warm Current, which flows between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico. Passing through the gulf, the Yucatan Current is replaced by the Florida Current, which, in turn, breaks out between Florida and Cuba. where it merges with the warm Antilles Current near the Bahamas. This is where the Gulf Stream originates.
The path of the Gulf Stream runs along North America. At the latitude of North Carolina, it turns noticeably to the northeast, and already south of the Newfoundland Bank the Gulf Stream ends. Its direct continuation, the North Atlantic Current, heads towards Northern Europe. where it runs between the British Isles and Iceland. Other branches of the Gulf Stream are the Canary Current, the West Greenland Current, the Labrador Current and the Irminger Current. The influence of the Gulf Stream is noticeable even in the Arctic Ocean in the form of the North Cape and Norwegian Currents.
The warm waters of the Gulf Stream are considered perhaps the most powerful climate-forming factor in the North Atlantic. Thanks to its warmth, the climatic conditions of the countries in the region are much milder than the climate at the same latitudes in Pacific Ocean or in the seas of the Southern Hemisphere.
Changes in the continuity of the Gulf Stream are a topic of debate in scientific circles. It is believed that disruption of the Gulf Stream will lead to a global climate catastrophe in Europe and North America. However, according to scientists, there is nothing to be afraid of yet.
The Gulf Stream is the most famous ocean current that flows across the sea rather than on land. But it is so large that its mass is greater than all the rivers flowing on land!
The Gulf Stream moves north along the east coast of the United States, across the North Atlantic Ocean, reaching northwest Europe. The color of the Gulf Stream - bright blue - contrasts with the greenish and gray water of the ocean through which it passes.
The Gulf Stream begins its journey in the Atlantic Ocean near the equator. Surface water movement or "drift" occurs in a westerly direction, so the Gulf Stream initially heads north of South America to the Caribbean Sea. It is only when it turns north and moves along the east coast of the United States that it becomes the Gulf Stream.
Since the Gulf Stream originated in a warm part of the world, it is a flow of warm water. The influx of a huge mass of warm water brings significant changes to the climate of many regions!
Here are some amazing examples: winds passing through the Gulf Stream into Northern Europe bring heat to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium. As a result, it is warmer here in winter than in other areas located at the same latitude. For the same reason sea ports The Norwegian coastline is ice-free all year round.
Thanks to the Gulf Stream, winters in Paris and London are warmer than in southern Labrador, where winters are very cold. Winds passing over the Gulf Stream become warm and humid. When such winds cool down, for example when approaching Newfoundland, thick fog forms. This is why there are the famous fogs on the Grand Bank in the Newfoundland area.
The Gulf Stream does not have the same effect on winter temperatures in North America as it does in Europe, since the winds blow towards Europe. An extensive system of warm ocean currents in the North Atlantic Ocean, covering the space from the Gulf of Mexico to Spitsbergen and the Kola Peninsula. The Gulf consists of: the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream in the strict sense of the word, the Atlantic Current, the Canary Current, the Irminger Current, the Norwegian Current, and the Spitsbergen Current.
For several centuries, the Gulf Stream was a kind of river in the ocean for sailors. Knowing its mode and direction well, an experienced helmsman steers the ship in the Gulf Stream, shortening the journey to the shores of Europe, and vice versa, moving in the opposite direction, prefers to stay away. Some of the most stable sections of the Gulf Stream were even jokingly called the “lady current”: another gallant captain entrusted the control of the ship to some passenger in such sections.
Firstly, will the waters of the Polar Gulfstream begin to cross the Arctic Basin on the surface.
Temperature is also affected by ocean currents. For example, the warm Gulf Stream softens the climate of Great Britain and western Norway so much that they fall into a zone of more high temperatures, than other areas located at the same latitudes. But the large expanse of water also has an adverse effect on coastal areas: freely raging winds pose a danger to flowers, leaves, branches and fruits. In addition, the wind blowing from the sea is saturated with salt, which can have a detrimental effect on leaves, young shoots and fruits. The garden must be protected from the winds by fences and hedges. On the other hand, winds significantly reduce the risk of frost.
Sources: techeniegolfstrim.ru, tochka-na-karte.ru, www.atomstroy.net, otvetina.narod.ru, ru-ecology.info
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Gulf Stream This is a “river” of warm water that moved across the Atlantic Ocean, reached Murmansk and warmed Europe with its heat, while protecting it from the polar winds.The Gulf Stream has stopped, and it acts as a thermostat for our planet. It prevents Europe from freezing and Scandinavia from turning into a glacial world. Due to recent events, everything has changed. Now the thermohaline circulation system is gradually dying and will soon disappear completely.
Explosion in the Gulf of Mexico
The culprit of the tragedy was the oil producing company British Petroleum (BP), where in April last year on an oil production platform Deepwater Horizon located in the Gulf of Mexico, an explosion occurred as a result of negligence. The consequences were simply terrible. For five months, the damaged Macondo well leaked uncontrolled oil, the total amount of which amounted to about 4.9 million barrels.
The damage caused to the Atlantic Ocean was simply colossal. Billions of dollars were required to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Having calculated the amount of expenses to be spent on eliminating the accident and paying a federal fine (depending on the scale of pollution), the management of the company (BP) turned to Barack Obama with a request to reduce the area of the polluted ocean by sinking oil to the bottom.
The Obama administration's (BP) request was granted, resulting in the release of approximately 2 million gallons of Corexit into the Atlantic Ocean, as well as several million gallons of other dispersants, in addition to the huge amount of crude oil already spilled. When asked by journalists about how such a measure would affect the ecology of the planet, management (BP) stated that everything would be fine and there was no reason to panic.
Scientists did not take the word of the management of the British Petroleum company and conducted a very simple experiment that clearly showed what was actually happening in the Atlantic Ocean. During the experiment we used a regular bath with cold water. By giving color to the warm streams of water, one could see the boundaries of the cold layers and warm streams. When oil was added to the bath, the boundaries of the warm water layers were broken and the flowing vortex was effectively destroyed. This experiment showed the principle of action of Corexit, which this moment slowly killing the Gulf Stream.
Before dispersants were added to the water, the causes of the disaster could have been eliminated, of course, a lot of money and time had to be spent on this, but now there is no way to do this, since at the moment there is no effective technology for cleaning the bottom of the bay. Moreover, the oil has already reached the east coast of America and then flowed into the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, where there are no prospects or possibilities for raising it to the surface and cleaning the ocean floor.
The Gulf Stream has stopped
First to report the stop Gulf Stream Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, a theoretical physicist at the Frascati Institute in Italy. He has been monitoring changes in the Gulf of Mexico for several years. All of his observations are based on photographs from the Colorado CCAR satellite, coordinated with the US Navy's NOAA.
After the publication of his article on irreversible changes in warm ocean currents, all photographs and maps received from CCAR were edited on the satellite's server.
Dr. Zangari is confident that the scale of pollution will only increase over time, since oil has the ability to expand, and this in turn will lead to even more severe consequences of the coming environmental disaster.
The pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico ceased to exist this fall, the latest satellite data clearly shows that the Gulf Stream is now gone, it begins to break up and die about 250 kilometers east of the North Carolina coast, despite the width of the Atlantic Ocean at this latitude exceeds 5000 km.
The picture of the near future of ecology was clearly drawn by the Russian scientist professor, author of two monographs and 130 publications in the field of physics, acoustics, geophysics, mathematics, physical chemistry, economics Sergei Leonidovich Lopatnikov.
The influence of the Gulf Stream on climate
According to S. Lopatnikov, the abnormal heat that lasted all last summer in Moscow and middle lane Russia, as well as floods in central Europe and inappropriate cold in Germany and England, are just the beginning of a changing climate system directly related to the Gulf Stream.
The thermohaline water system, in which warm waters flow through cooler ones, has a major influence not only on the ocean, but also on the upper atmosphere up to seven miles high. The absence of the Gulf Stream in the eastern part of the North Atlantic disrupts the normal course of atmospheric flows, which leads to natural disasters.
Based on these considerations, in the near future we will face drought, crop failures, famine, large migrations of people from uninhabitable areas, global cooling (the irony of fate is that they were afraid of global warming, but they waited global cooling) and as a result glacial period, which will first cover the territory of North America and then smoothly move to Europe and Asia.
During global icing, if the whole process proceeds quickly, 2/3 of humanity will die, and if the rate of capture of territories by the cold is not so active, then the same 2/3 will die only within a few years.
So. If we delve even deeper into the initial forecasts for the development of the future climate, then at a glance we can safely say the following:
- In the near future, an oil film will appear on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.
- Oil, artificially deposited to the bottom, will subsequently rise and become a layer between layers of water.
The first above will have two consequences:
- The parameters of moisture evaporation and heat transfer will change water surface and the atmosphere will be disturbed (obviously, less evaporates, and the evaporated liquid is warmer than normal).
- The dynamics of heating and cooling will change water masses, carried away by currents formed in the Atlantic (including in the Gulf of Mexico and near it).
The second point described above will lead to two more consequences:
- Due to oil in the middle layers of water, it will lose its transparency and will create the effect of a giant lens, which will cause strong heating of the liquid and air itself, inevitably leading to the death of fish, birds and animals.
- The second adverse effect will be reflected in changes in composition, color, viscosity, temperature and salinity sea water in the Gulf of Mexico, and this will lead to a stop in the ring current. One can only guess about the consequences.
Global catastrophe
Completely new data was also obtained, based on the study of satellite images and precise mathematical analysis made by Dr. Zangari.
“Today, temperature measurements of the Gulf Stream between the 76th and 47th meridians show that it is 10 degrees Celsius colder than it was at the same time last year. Accordingly, we can talk about the presence of a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the stop of the warm Ring Current in the Gulf of Mexico and the drop in Gulf Stream temperature.” The Gulf Stream has stopped.
One can only guess - who does Barack Obama think he is, making such serious decisions alone, without consulting other states? When it comes to a global catastrophe, it is absolutely unacceptable to take into account any territorial principles.
What concerns more than one country cannot be decided by the government of that state. He not only made a decision that was disastrous for the planet, but is also an accomplice in a crime against humanity and the environment.
Update from 2014
According to the latest data, the Gulf Stream has completely disappeared. Tons of oil that entered the ocean caused a mixture of different temperature currents and destroyed the Gulf Stream, which is the “oven of Europe.” The warm and comfortable climate depended 90 percent on it Western Europe and America. Its waters carried 50 million m3 of warm water per second, and the flow power was equivalent to 1 million nuclear power plants.
We can already see the consequences of a global catastrophe. A series of floods, severe frosts and abnormal precipitation swept across the USA, Europe and Russia. IN summer periods Europe is flooded with cold, torrential rains, while America cannot cope with abnormal heat and drought.
The warm current, once called the Gulf Stream, carried its waters to the northern latitudes, changing local climate. In the future, this could turn into another global catastrophe for humanity. Large-scale melting of centuries-old glaciers.
But he won’t think about such distant cataclysms, since we simply won’t live to see them.
It took more than three months to localize the accident on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, during which 800,000 cubic meters of oil spilled into the ocean. The maximum damage to the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was caused in the first days. For several more months, the liquidators of the accident tried to scoop out the rapidly spreading oil spills, but their attempts were in vain.
Giant oil lenses penetrated deep into the ocean, causing all living things beneath them to die. Seeing that it was useless to deal with the consequences of the accident using old methods, the US government, together with the cabinet of directors of the British Petroleum company, took radical measures, dumping tons of chemical reagents into the ocean that deposited oil to the bottom. Next, to destroy the oil, they decided to use the latest microorganisms specially created for this purpose.
Bacteria synthia
Since the late 80s, American geneticists have been developing artificial microorganisms that feed on hydrocarbons and are capable of absorbing petroleum products, natural gas and coal.
As a result, in 2007, Synthetic Genomics Inc. patented its development. A completely artificial bacterium called “Cynthia”.
Geneticists managed to synthesize artificial DNA and place it in living cell, and then breed the offspring of this microorganism. The developers of Cynthia positioned their brainchild as a means of combating oil spills, but some researchers are confident that it is a biological weapon, by-effect which is eating oil. This is what they wanted to use to eliminate the consequences of the accident.
At first, synthia actually absorbed oil products, but moving deeper into the ocean, multiplying, creating their own colonies and mutating, the preferences of these bacteria changed dramatically. They abandoned oil and began to eat organic matter: algae, jellyfish, fish, animals and, eventually, people.
Already in 2011, it became clear that the cynthia were no longer engaged in destroying oil spills, but, by multiplying, they ate all life in the ocean.
After some time, frightening information appeared in the press that the inhabitants of the Mexican coast were struck by a certain virus, originally called the “Blue Flu”.
Symptoms of blue flu appeared in people who swam in the Gulf of Mexico, and were expressed in the form of skin ulcers, internal bleeding and damage to the respiratory tract.
At first, the disease was stopped with antibiotics, but the victims were left with severe damage to the skin and respiratory organs. Not knowing how to cope with the scourge, doctors said that it was some new virus unknown to medicine, which they had no means of combating.
It later turned out that the unknown virus was carried by synthia, created in such a way that no antibiotic or chemical affected them. You could say they are practically invulnerable.
Why was it necessary to make bacteria created to eliminate oil pollution, so resistant to suppression methods is not clear? This is where many researchers began to say that this virus was created as a weapon, and its tests were carried out in the Gulf of Mexico, but something went wrong, the virus mutated, and the antidote made to deactivate it did not work.
Whichever version is correct, it doesn’t matter now. Hundreds of residents of the Mexican coast are dying from purulent wounds, and this is due to the cynthia, which are still spreading unhindered through the waters of the world's oceans.
The US authorities are aware of the consequences of their carelessness, but at the same time they do their best to restrain the large-scale dissemination of scandalous information. Having destroyed the Gulf Stream and destroyed the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico, it seemed to the White House administration that it was not enough, and they decided to further aggravate the problem by opening Pandora's box and releasing a deadly infection into the ocean, from which there is no salvation yet.
The warm Gulf Stream is a phenomenon global scale, which influences the formation of climate throughout the planet and is especially important for climate mitigation Western European countries, in particular - British Isles And northern shores Scandinavian Peninsula.
The Gulf Stream was discovered in early XVI V. Spanish navigators, and at first they called it Florida. In the era sailing fleet routes between Europe and the New World were built with the aid of trade winds, westerly winds and corresponding currents, whose location on the map was beyond doubt. At first, the Gulf Stream was something of a maritime legend: those who constantly encountered this current along their route knew about it. Many experienced captains have learned to use its power by moving with the current, or to cross the current in time when they should have gone in the opposite direction. But they were in no hurry to share their knowledge with competitors, considering the secret of the Gulf Stream their “intellectual property”, which gives them an advantage at sea.
The outstanding American scientist was the first to study this current, put it on a map in 1769 (using the advice of his cousin, the captain of a whaling ship), and assigned it the “popular” name Gulf Stream (English: “golf” - bay, “stream” - current). And public figure Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Franklin, having a wide range of interests, was convinced that science must be useful. In particular, the purpose of studying the current was to compile the optimal route for postal ships.
Until the 20th century people had the most general ideas about the nature of ocean currents. In the days of sailing ships it was believed that surface currents only winds form: for example, tropical trade winds, blowing steadily from the east, drive waves in a westerly direction, forming trade wind currents. In the temperate latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere and in the subpolar “roaring forties” in the north, westerly winds blow. But why do the southern trade winds deviate to the west and the northern trade winds to the east? Later, physicists will complement the intuitive observations of sailors with a theory: tropical trade winds (winds) are accelerated by the force of the Earth's rotation, the winds create surface currents in the upper 45 m of the ocean, but under the influence of physical laws, the currents move at an angle to the direction of the wind. Because of this, the system of currents in the Northern Hemisphere in general terms resembles a grandiose spiral moving clockwise (and the Gulf Stream is one of the key links in this chain), and in Southern Hemisphere a similar spiral twists the ring of currents counterclockwise (there are five main oceanic cycles in the world). At the same time, the contours of the continents also have a great influence on the trajectory of surface jet currents locally. But that’s not all: the occurrence of currents is now explained by the combined action of Coriolis forces (rotational acceleration that deflects an object moving on a rotating disk radially in the direction opposite to rotation), differences in temperature and salinity of water, fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and interaction with the moving atmosphere; currents are divided into drift (caused by winds), gradient and tidal (in addition, the ocean tends to form synoptic eddies, seiches and tsunamis)…
In general, in the World Ocean there is constantly a complex multilayer circulation of a closed system of ocean currents, warm surface and cold deep, whose general scheme under code name The “Global Ocean Conveyor” was proposed in the 1980s. American oceanographer Wallace Brocker. But the question of the circulation of the atmosphere and waters of the World Ocean still remains incompletely studied.
IN in the narrow sense The "Gulf Current" is that section of a broad, powerful current that carries its warm waters from south to north along the east coast of North America, starting from the Straits of Florida and ending at the Newfoundland Bank.
It is this current that geographical maps designated as the Gulf Stream. It then divides into branches, and one branch turns back to the tropics, while the other changes curvature and goes into the North Atlantic (North Atlantic Current).
Ocean currents of such a scale as the trade winds, Western Winds, Gulf Stream and Kuroshiro largely determine not only the conditions of navigation and fishing, but also the climate of the continents, so they are often compared to the pulse of the planet. But even more often they are compared to rivers.
If we imagine the Gulf Stream as a river and use the appropriate terms, then this “river” is formed near the Bahamas by the confluence of two “tributaries”: the Florida Current (a continuation of the Yucatan Current flowing from the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Yucatan), a powerful stream emerging through the narrow strait between Cuba and Florida, and the Antilles Current. The North Trade Wind Current pushes excess water into the Caribbean Sea. The Gulf Stream gains most of its heat by warming up in the Gulf of Mexico - this is one of the warmest bodies of water on Earth.
Then the current goes in a narrow strip along the coast to the level of North Carolina and there it leaves coastal zone, heading to open ocean in a northeast direction.
Along its path, the flow forms vortices along the edges, which from time to time break away from the main stream and form branches - “sleeves”. Having reached the shallows of the Great Newfoundland Bank, the Gulf Stream deviates even more to the east and rushes across the North Atlantic towards Europe, changing its name to the North Atlantic Current. But before this, part of the flow manages to separate, turning north, towards Iceland (Irminger Current) and Greenland, into the Labrador Basin; then they are picked up by the Labrador Current, closing the ring. Another “arm” deviates from the main stream to the south, reaching along the Portuguese coast to Mediterranean Sea, where it is picked up and enclosed in a ring by the Canary Current.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Current (the central continuation of the Gulf Stream), having reached the British Isles and Scandinavia, significantly softens the climate there: average temperatures there differ from latitudinal norms by 5-6 and 10-15 degrees, respectively.
U north coast The current on the Scandinavian Peninsula has local names - Norwegian and North Cape. Traces of the Gulf Stream are found even in the Arctic Ocean: its residual heat “warms up” the port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, making shipping possible there all year round, even when Arkhangelsk, located further south on the White Sea, is locked in ice.
What and where does the Gulf Stream carry with it? Water (although one of the modern theories states that currents have a cyclical nature of wave dynamics and do not transport matter). Warmth, significantly softening the climate of Western and Northern Europe. Kinetic energy, which they have recently begun to try to capture using devices like windmills and use for economic needs. Sea turtles and eels, helping them on their epic migration. The current in a certain area has important navigational significance, accelerating the movement of ships. In general, the current picks up and carries everything that comes in its way, and this is not always good: it carries with it a lot of algae, oil, harmful waste (chemical fertilizers from plantations), and so on.
The Gulf Stream may deviate from its route, but stopping it powerful current, which arose after the closure of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago, is in principle impossible. But the same cannot be said about the North Atlantic Current: it depends on many “variables,” and its strong weakening, known as the Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillation, has been observed 17 times over the past 60 thousand years. If the weakened North Atlantic Current turns entirely south towards Africa, this could become a real disaster for Western and Northern Europe.
general information
The drainage current of the Gulf of Mexico, which has a moderating effect on the climate of Northern and Western Europe.Location: North Atlantic, flows along the east coast of North America from the Straits of Florida to the island of Newfoundland.
Covers countries: USA.
Detection time: XVI century (Spanish sailors).
First explorer and cartographer: Benjamin Franklin in 1768-1770. and later.
Precursor currents: Florida and Antilles.
Branch currents: Irminger, West Greenland, North Atlantic and its branches.
Numbers
Gulf Stream at the exit to the ocean from the Straits of Florida
Stream width: about 75 km.
Flow thickness: 700-800 m.
Average water consumption: 25 million m 3 /s (this is 20 times more consumption all rivers).
Average current speed: 9-10 km/h.
: +24-28°C.
Salinity: 36.0-36.9%o (at the surface).
Maximum water flow: up to 85 million m 3 /s (after connecting with the Antilles Current).
In the Great Newfoundland Bank area
Flow width: up to 200 km.
Average current speed: 3-4 km/h.
Surface water temperature: +10-20°С.
Salinity: about 35%o (at the surface).
Maximum length(if you count to Spitsbergen): up to 10 thousand km.
Climate and weather
The Gulf Stream has a huge impact on the climate of the North Atlantic Ocean and the adjacent part of the Arctic Ocean, as well as on the climate of Europe, creating very mild conditions for northern latitudes.Average January temperatures: due to the warm current, they deviate from the average latitude norms in Norway by 15-20°, in Murmansk - by 10° or more.
Economy
The Gulf Stream is important for navigation and fishing; his kinetic energy can be used to generate electricity; its decisive influence on the global climate and the chemical and biological composition of the World Ocean is indisputable.Attractions
■ The Gulf Stream at the very beginning of its journey passes through Bermuda Triangle(between Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico) - an area in the Sargasso Sea that has a bad reputation anomalous zone, where ships and planes disappear without a trace.■ Coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream carries large accumulations of floating algae of the genus Sargassum and various species of thermophilic fish (including flying fish) into a section of the ocean that does not flow anywhere, but is twisted clockwise by currents, and primarily by the Gulf Stream. Despite the huge amount of algae, which has become a real disaster for sailors, the water in the Sargasso Sea is amazingly clear: a white disk is visible at a depth of 65.5 m.
■ The color of the water in the Gulf Stream is pale blue, coastal areas greenish tints appear; the boundary between the current and the ocean waters is clearly visible - dark blue and less transparent. Water transparency decreases from south to north.
■ Where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current and comes into contact with colder air, fog is almost constant.
Curious facts
■ After the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama, the North Atlantic warmed by 6-7 degrees, and in the Southern Hemisphere, on the contrary, it became colder. The Gulf Stream was formed. Thus, a favorable climate for humans in Europe arose thanks to the isthmus, which gave rise to a global interoceanic circulation.■ The Gulf Stream has not disappeared since the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, that is, about 3 million years, and is unlikely to disappear, due to its nature, but it can change the latitudes at which it crosses the Atlantic. Depending on whether it passes further south or north, different flows of moisture and heat will form, because the contrast with the air will be different. If the current goes further south, the warm air will contain more moisture and more powerful cyclones will form.
We have already gotten used to warm winters and hot summers, and therefore the snowy spring and the cold summer of 2017 in Russia contrast very much against this background. Scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warn that winters in Europe could become colder. Disruption of water circulation in the oceans and slowdown of the Gulf Stream can lead to difficult-to-calculate, but definitely negative consequences for the whole planet.
The Gulf Stream has slowed down
The main conclusion of this study is that the circulation of water in the oceans is slowing down and that one of the consequences of this may be a slowdown of the Gulf Stream. This in turn will lead to many disasters. Cold winters in Europe and severely rising water levels that will threaten major coastal cities on the US East Coast, such as New York and Boston. According to their data, the Gulf Stream, which brings a mild climate to Northern Europe and favorable conditions for residents of the southeastern United States, is slowing at the fastest rate in 1,000 years.
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf:
What's immediately noticeable is that one particular area in the North Atlantic has been cooling for the last hundred years, while the rest of the world has been warming. We have now found compelling evidence that the global pipeline has indeed been weakening over the last hundred years, especially since 1970.
The scientists' findings confirm that as global temperatures rise due to climate change, areas warmed by the Gulf Stream show a drop in temperature, especially during the winter. An influx of warm water from the equator that travels across the ocean, passing through the Gulf of Mexico and then up the west side Great Britain and Norway, contributes to the warm climate in Northern Europe. This makes winter conditions in much of northern Europe significantly milder than they would normally be, protecting these regions from large quantity snow and ice during the winter months.
Now, researchers have discovered that the water in the North Atlantic Ocean is colder than predicted. computer models previously. According to their calculations, between 1900 and 1970, 8,000 cubic kilometers of fresh water entered the Atlantic Ocean from Greenland. In addition, the same source provided an additional 13,000 cubic kilometers between 1970 and 2000. This fresh water has a lower density than salty ocean, and therefore tends to stay near the surface, disturbing the balance of the huge current.
In the 1990s, circulation began to recover, but the recovery turned out to be temporary. Now there is a new weakening, possibly due to the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
At the moment, the circulation is 15-20% weaker than one or two decades ago. At first glance, this is not so much. But on the other hand, according to scientists, this has not happened on Earth for at least 1,100 years. It is also alarming that the weakening of circulation is occurring faster than the rate predicted by scientists.
Researchers believe that the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300 was associated precisely with the slowdown of the Gulf Stream. In the 1310s, Western Europe, judging by the chronicles, experienced a real ecological disaster. After the traditionally warm summer of 1311, four gloomy and rainy summer 1312-1315. Heavy rains and unusually harsh winters led to the loss of several crops and the freezing of orchards in England, Scotland, northern France and Germany. In Scotland and northern Germany, viticulture and wine production then ceased. Winter frosts began to affect even northern Italy. F. Petrarch and G. Boccaccio recorded that in the 14th century. snow often fell in Italy.
In 2009-2010, American scientists already recorded a sudden increase in water levels in the Atlantic off the east coast of America by 10 cm. Then the current weakening of the circulation was just beginning. If it weakens sharply, the water level may rise by 1 meter. Moreover, we are talking only about an increase due to weakening of circulation. To this meter should also be added the rise in water that is expected from global warming.
Scientists have calculated that the warm Gulf Stream current is so powerful that it carries more water than all the rivers on the planet combined. Despite all its power, it is only one, albeit large, component global process thermohaline, that is, temperature-salty circulation of water. Its key components are located in the North Atlantic - where the Gulf Stream flows. That's why he plays like this important role in shaping the climate on the planet.
The Gulf Stream carries warm water north into colder waters. At the Great Newfoundland Bank it turns into the North Atlantic Current, which influences the weather in Europe. This current moves further north until the cold waters with increased salt content go to greater depths due to their increased density. Then the current at great depths turns around and moves in the opposite direction - to the south. The Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current play a critical role in shaping climate because they transport warm water north and cold water south to the tropics, thus constantly mixing water between ocean basins.
If too much ice melts in the North Atlantic (Greenland), the cold salt water becomes desalinated. Reducing the salt content in water reduces its density, and it rises to the surface. This process can slow down and eventually even stop thermohaline circulation. Director Roland Emmerich tried to show what could happen in this case in the science fiction film “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004). In his version, a new ice age began on Earth, which provoked disasters and chaos on a planetary scale.
Scientists reassure: if this happens, it will not be very soon. However, global warming does slow down circulation. One consequence, notes Stefan Rahmstorf, could be rising Atlantic Ocean levels off the east coast of the United States and significantly colder winters in Europe.
On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred 80 kilometers off the coast of Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico. oil platform Deepwater Horizon, owned by British Petroleum (BP), which developed the Macondo field. The oil spill that followed the accident (explosion and fire) became the largest in US history, turning the accident into one of the largest man-made disasters on the negative impact on environmental situation and the environment.
Italian physicists conducted an experiment in which they used a bath of cold water and gave color to warm streams of water. It was possible to see the boundaries of cold layers and warm jets. When oil was added to the bath, the boundaries of the layers of warm water were broken and the flowing vortex was effectively destroyed. This is exactly what happened in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf Stream. The river of "warm water" that flows from the Caribbean is reaching less and less of Western Europe and is dying because of Corexit (COREXIT-9500), a toxic chemical that the Obama administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the disaster resulting from the explosion of a drilling platform in April last year. As a result, according to some sources, about 42 million gallons of this dispersant were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Corexit, along with several million gallons of other dispersants, added to the more than 200 million gallons of crude oil that had been pouring for months from a well drilled by BP on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In this way, it was possible to effectively hide most of the oil by lowering it to the bottom, and hope that the BP concern would be able to seriously reduce the size of the federal fine, depending on the size of the oil disaster. Currently, there are no ways to effectively “clean” the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, oil reached the east coast of America and then flowed into the North Atlantic Ocean. There, too, there is no way to effectively purify the oil at the bottom.
The first to report the stoppage of the Gulf Stream was Dr. Gianluigi Zangari, a theoretical physicist from the Frascati Institute in Italy (Rome). He said that due to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, glaciation is "inevitable in the near future." The scientist had previously collaborated for several years with a group of specialists monitoring what was happening in the Gulf of Mexico. His information is contained in a June 12, 2010 journal article and is based on Colorado CCAR satellite data coordinated with US Navy NOAA. This live satellite map data was later altered on the CCAR server and the scientist claims it was “falsified.”
Dr. Zangari argues that the huge amount of oil covers such vast areas that it has a serious impact on the entire thermoregulatory system of the planet by destroying the boundary layers of the warm flow of water. As a result, in the fall of 2010, the pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico ceased to exist, and satellite data from that period clearly showed that the Gulf Stream began to break up and die about 250 kilometers east of the North Carolina coast, despite the fact that the width of the Atlantic Ocean at this latitude exceeds 5000 kilometers.
In connection with the interest that the topic of the “disappearance” of the Gulf Stream aroused on the Internet, Russian scientist Professor Sergei Leonidovich Lopatnikov, author of two monographs and 130 publications in the field of physics, acoustics, geophysics, mathematics, physical chemistry, economics, wrote the following on his blog:
About the Gulf Stream and Winter Weather The thermohaline vascular system, where warm waters flow through cooler ones, has a major influence not only on the ocean, but also on the upper atmosphere up to seven miles high. The absence of the Gulf Stream in the eastern part of the North Atlantic disrupted the normal course of atmospheric flows in the summer of 2010, resulting in unheard-of high temperatures in Moscow, droughts and floods in Central Europe, increased temperatures in many Asian countries, and massive floods in China, Pakistan and others. Asian countries.
So what does this all mean? This means that in the future there will be forced mixing of seasons, frequent crop failures, an increase in the extent of droughts and floods in various places Earth. In fact, the creation by BP of an “oil volcano” at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico killed the “pacemaker” of the global climate on the planet. Here's what Dr. Zangari says about it:
I know well the history of our atmosphere, climate, and even what they were like when man did not yet exist. For example, hundreds of millions of years ago the temperature was 12-14 degrees higher compared to today. Of course, there is something to reproach a person for... Over the past fifty years, industry has worked very intensively, throwing out a huge amount greenhouse gases, which certainly influenced the climate. That is, there is definitely an anthropogenic contribution. But climate is a very subtle phenomenon. In addition to high temperatures, there have also been glaciations on Earth. And they occur when greenhouse gas concentrations are below two hundred parts per million. Then the so-called “ white earth" So, now we are closer to this “white earth” than to the hottest anomalies that have occurred in the history of our planet.
Everything that happened will lead to corresponding consequences for human civilization, to ecological collapse, global famine, death and mass migration of people from areas unsuitable for human habitation. A new ice age can begin at any time, and it will begin with glaciation in North America, Europe and Asia possibly. A new ice age could kill 2/3 of the human race in the first year if it starts quickly. If everything happens slowly, then most likely approximately the same amount of the population will die, but just within a few years!
What do we have at the input? More than warm water. By a fraction of a degree, but it matters. What do we get as a result? Westerly winds prevailing in the center of the Atlantic carry Southern Europe warmer and more humid air than before. It could not break through the so-called “hot glass” over the flat territory of the Russian Federation in the summer and dumped moisture in the upper reaches of European rivers (in the mountains).
What is even more important are the lenses of heavier oil fractions “sunk” with the help of binding chemicals hundreds of meters deep. These inclusions prevent convection heat exchange between the bottom and surface layers of water. At the same time, they were “sunk and okay.” But because of this, there was a change in the viscosity of water saturated with oil emulsion to great depths due to the treatment of oil emissions with the binding drug Corexit.
As Dr. Zangari notes, “The real concern is that there is no historical precedent for sudden complete replacement natural system is a broken system created by man.” And worst of all, real-time satellite data is clear evidence to Zangari that a new man-made natural system has emerged in the Gulf of Mexico. Within this new and unnatural system, parameters such as the viscosity, temperature and salinity of sea water radically changed. This stopped the millions of years of the Ring Current in the Gulf of Mexico.
The opinion expressed by Dr. Zangari with mathematical precision and illustrated by the dynamics of satellite imagery is best read several times:
Temperature measurements of the Gulf Stream in 2010 between the 76th and 47th meridians show it to be 10 degrees Celsius colder than it was during the same period last year. Accordingly, we can talk about the presence of a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the stop of the warm Ring Current in the Gulf of Mexico and the drop in temperature of the Gulf Stream.
Assumption of Consequences
Meteorologists warn: planet Earth has entered the so-called Little Ice Age, which may be followed by a big one - this is when even dinosaurs began to die out on Earth. The first alarm bell rang in 2013, when the never-freezing Black Sea became covered with ice. Well, after the beautiful blue Danube and even the Venetian canals froze in Europe, real panic began. What is the reason for such anomalies and what could this mean for our planet?
Due to the fact that the warm Atlantic Gulf Stream is changing its direction, by about 2025 the Earth will most likely begin to experience a sharp cooling. In a matter of days Northern Arctic Ocean will freeze and turn into a second Antarctica. After this, the following will be covered with a thick layer of ice: Northern, Norwegian and even Baltic Sea. The navigable English Channel and even the never-freezing European rivers Thames and Seine will freeze. IN European countries Forty-degree frosts will begin. Cold winds will bring heavy snowfalls from the North Atlantic - as a result, all European airports will stop operating and the power supply to many cities will be cut off. In just a few weeks, all of Europe will be plunged into pitch darkness and then turn into an icy desert. All this, according to scientists’ forecasts, is a very real scenario of what could happen in just 10 years. The earth will be on the brink of disaster.
Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm - in two years the Gulf Stream has deviated from its previous direction by 800 kilometers and now, instead of moving to the northeast (to heat Europe), the warm current turns to the northwest - towards Canada.
If this deviation turns out to be permanent and the Gulf Stream never heads into the North Atlantic again, a global catastrophe will occur on Earth. The Gulf Stream will melt the ice of Greenland; a huge mass of water will pour onto the mainland and actually wash away all of North America from the face of the Earth, but this is not the worst thing. All this will set in motion earth plates, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tsunamis will begin on the planet. Scientists predict that if this happens, two-thirds of the population will die out almost instantly. In the Eastern Hemisphere: Europe, Asia and even Africa will begin a new ice age, while western hemisphere, literally, will be washed away by huge masses of water.
But the worst thing will happen later. According to scientists, 10 years after the Gulf Stream changes its direction, the flow may stop forever. To confirm or refute this assumption that the Gulf Stream really stops, Canadian researchers conducted an experiment - they developed a special dye, poured it into containers and immersed it in the Gulf of Mexico to a depth of 900 meters. There, at a given depth, containers with dye explode, spraying the contents over hundreds of meters. Colored mass ocean water pours out into the Gulf Stream. This is incredible, but the assumption about stopping the Gulf Stream was confirmed. The colored water, indeed, did not move towards Europe. Instead, the current has diverted 800 kilometers to the west and is now moving towards Greenland. This is why anomalous warming is occurring in Canada and instead of frosts, temperatures of about +10 degrees and rain can be observed there throughout the winter.
To prepare the article we used:
— article by Sergei Manukov, posted on the website expert.ru,
- materials from the site