Ocean Circulation Shut Down by Melting Glaciers After Last Ice Age
November 19, 2001 - (date of web publication) At the end of the last Ice Age 13 to 11.5 thousand years ago, the North Atlantic Deep Water circulation system that drives the Gulf Stream may have shut down because of melting glaciers that added freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean over several hundred years, NASA and university researchers confirm. Since the Gulf Stream brings warm tropical waters north, Western Europe cooled. [STOP global warming..help save the earth!!] The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study also finds that if a shutdown persisted for a long enough time, the entire Northern Hemisphere would eventually cool. The computer model simulations of ocean and atmosphere processes used in this study imply a similar phenomenon has the potential to occur in the future due to freshwater additions from increased rain and snow caused by global climate change. "For the first time, it is shown that realistic additions of glacial meltwater into th...