Global Warming Could Cool North America in a Few Decades

Article by Kate Ravilious for National Geographic news
"Global warming could actually chill down North America in just a few decades" reports Tim Daley of Swansea University in the U.K. Research has found that the usually warm current called the Gulf Stream has been injected by a huge pulse of freshwater from glacial lake causing the stream to slow down. The climate history of Antarctica was found to be in continuous change with many episodes of warming and cooling. Although most of these changes occurred slowly some of the changes were rapid and of significant magnitude – that might be equivalent to the climate of Alabama being changed to the climate of Maine in just one or two decades. Society has the best opportunity to adapt if climate changes gradually, however, a rapid change in climate would wreak havoc on people and their structures. Could we be on the edge of a rapid climate change? Daley and his colleagues have found from a moss study dated back more than 8,700 years ago that about 8,350 years ago the mosses oxygen levels dropped due to the occurence of lower air temperature. Their models are now showing to "significantly underestimate the impact and duration of the climate perturation". This means that these same models might not be accurately predicting what might happen in the furture if Greenland's ice sheet continues to melt. Fortunately, other reasearches, not involved in the study, believe that this reoccurence is possible but most likely will not be as dramatic a last time.

I honestly was very fascinated by this article. Normally when people talk about Global warming they think strictly about the warming of our earth and mainly our regional effects. We do not focus on the warming that is occuring else where and in this case Greenland poses to be a main factor. If those frozen ice caps were to melt then my home of warm and humid VA would experience a major climate drop due to the coast line. I think that this is when sustainability comes into play and people start to make a change for the environment in order to prevent a phenomenon such as this one. I am very interested in this topic and will be keeping posted.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090914-north-america-cooling-warming.html


-Alyssa G