Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonraker
I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number
of years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly
others have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple
sprouting broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the
vegetables has been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers
in pots have survived it is too early to tell.
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Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire
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Hi Moonraker, Well, I know everyone has a theory about weather patterns but try this for size ! One of my golfing partners down here in Cornwall works on a research ship out of Falmouth, monitoring amonst other things, the gulf stream flow. They sadly have found that the gulf stream has infact reduced by 20% in volume in the last 5 years !!
The reason being, according to thier findings is as follows. The warm water flows over the Atlantic, on the surface. cooling slowly as it travels North East. It passes western UK and on up into the northern Atlantic. As it cools, it gets increasingly heavier and ultimately sinks and then travels back along the sea floor back to the Gulf of Mexico, thus completing what they call the North Atlantic conveyer system.
Now here is the problem, with all the ice melt from the northern ice sheets and with this huge volume of fresh water being added to also by vast rivers now flowing out of northern land masses, the salt water is actually being diluted and the effect of this is that it prohibits the cooling gulf water from sinking and its this thats actually cutting off this system !!
The million dollar question is, at what point does the flow stop completely ?? the answer is, THEY ARE NOT SURE but its thier opinion that we are very close ??? What does this mean, well, for UK, it means, Montreal type winters almost immedeately. Snow for 6 months every winter and upto 3 miles of sea ice not being uncommon !!
This phenomenon has happened once before, where this system shut down and then, it took 300 years for this gulf stream to activate again !!
So, why are we not being given this information by the goverment, well, if you think about it, its fairly obvious why ??
Lets hope this is not going to happen, as you can see, the effect on the country as a whole in general and to both agriculture and horticulture would be to say the least catastrophic but having grown plants down here in Cornwall for the last 30 years, with many of those years being virtually frost free, we all said, the first bad winter was a fluke, the second, an unfortunate coincidence but three in a row !!!!!!!!!! Maybe my friends research is not as far fetched as I first thought ????????
Time will surely tell ?? Lannerman .