Gulf stream at its lowest level in 1,000 years

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LONDON:The Atlantic “overturning” is a current which brings warm water north and cold water south. This ocean current affects weather and sea levels, warms cities on both sides of the atlantic, drives Gulf streams and delivers nutrients from the sea floor that provides for North Atlantic ecosystems and fisheries.
However, that current is currently moving more slowly than it has at any point in the last thousand years. According to new research, “the gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by man-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown.”
Further weakening of the system, could cause flooding, alter weather patterns disrupt ecosystems and threaten fisheries in Europe and North America.
“It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up. Now we have detected strong evidence that the global conveyor has indeed been weakening in the past hundred years, particularly since 1970,” said Stefan Rahmstorf in a statement.
Rahmstorf works with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and is lead author of the new study, soon to be published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Obviously, the researchers do not have detailed circulation data for the region going back into prehistory. However, because the ocean current is a lead cause of temperature variation, weather, sea levels and other elements of the subpolar north Atlantic climate, the researchers were able to gather proxy-data.
Proxy-data is gathered by testing coral, tree rings, ocean sediments, coral and other stable elements of the region to determine climate patterns and work backward from there to determine the flow of the Atlantic overturning.
According to the proxy-data, the last time the current was it its current slow level was around 900 AD.