Gulf Stream could be threatened by Arctic flush

Newscientist Enviroment
18:00 05 April 2011 by Fred Pearce
For similar stories, visit the Mysteries of the Deep Sea and Climate Change 

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Conveyor breakdown
A dramatic freshening of the North Atlantic could disrupt the engine of a global ocean circulation system called the thermohaline circulation, or ocean conveyor. This system, of which the Gulf Stream forms a part, is driven by dense, salty water in the North Atlantic plunging to the ocean bottom near Greenland.
"In the worst case, these Arctic surges can significantly change the densities of marine surface waters in the far North Atlantic," says de Steur.
Some 13,000 years ago, a major freshening of the North Atlantic shut down the circulation and plunged the Earth into a cold snap, known as the Younger Dryas era, which lasted for 1300 years. That was the result of an influx of fresh water much larger than is building up now, but some climate models do predict the circulation could weaken in coming decades, says Detlef Quadfasel of the climate centre at Hamburg University in Germany. The discovery of pooling fresh water in the Arctic suggests how this could happen.
The monitoring is being carried out as part of Project Clamer, a 10-nation European project into the impact of climate change on the waters around Europe.

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