Quote:
Originally Posted by lannerman
the gulf stream has infact reduced by 20% in volume in the last 5 years !!
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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 !!
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This is a common misunderstanding. If you look at the difference in winter temperature between Montreal and London you will discover that it is about 17C different in January. Not all of this difference is due to the gulf stream. For example, Vancouver has a similar latitude to Montreal and London, but Vancouver doesn't have the gulf stream, and Vancouver is only about 1C cooler than London in January.
In fact only about 2C of London's winter warmth is due to the gulf stream. Most of the rest of the difference with Montreal is due to (1) not being continental location (2) being west of a large ocean with westerly prevailing winds (3) some specific topographic effects due to the location of mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere which affect the location of the jetstream.
The gulf stream is far more significant for northern Norway, where it is worth about 6C.