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Experts stunned by Atlantic current coming to a halt

James Randerson

Part of the current came to a temporary halt in November 2004.

SCIENTISTS HAVE uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic.

Most alarmingly, the data reveal that part of the current, usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon, came to a temporary halt in November 2004.

Warm water brought to western Europe's shores raises the temperature by as much as 10 degrees Centigrade in some places and without it the continent would be much colder and drier.

Researchers are not sure yet what to make of the 10-day hiatus. "We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't understand it. We didn't know it could happen," said Harry Bryden, at the National Oceanography Centre, in Southampton, who presented the findings to a conference in Birmingham on rapid climate change.

Lloyd Keigwin, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, described the temporary shutdown as "the most abrupt change in the whole [climate] record." He said: "Suppose it lasted 30 or 60 days, when do you ring up the Prime Minister and say let's start stockpiling fuel? ... How can we rule out a longer one next year?"

Professor Bryden's group stunned climate researchers last year with data suggesting that the flow rate of the Atlantic circulation had dropped by about six million tonnes of water a second from 1957 to 1998.

If the current remained that weak, he predicted, it would lead to a 1 degree Centigrade drop in the U.K. in the next decade. A complete shutdown would lead to a 4C-6C cooling over 20 years. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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