Global warming throws some curves in the Atlantic Ocean
OCT 24, 2008
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.022802
Science : It was an ominous if subtle shift in the far North Atlantic. For 30 years, waters off southern Greenland and Iceland had been growing less and less salty, oceanographers reported in late 2003. It looked as if global warming could be freshening high-latitude Atlantic waters (Science, 2 January 2004, p. 35). If the trend continued, they worried, it could throw a monkey wrench into the “conveyor belt” of currents that warms the far North Atlantic, as is wildly overdone in the movie The Day After Tomorrow. New analyses have now shown that global warming is indeed messing with the Atlantic’s salinity, although not as dramatically as Hollywood envisioned.
© 2008 American Institute of Physics
