global warming ending in ten years?

Question

I heard that a scientist said that global warming is happening to the oceans currents and when it stops global warming will stop. anyone else read this?

Answer 1

you might want to report your source.

what is true is that if the oceans heat up, and the north pole ice melt, the 'engine' making a warm current go up north, the cold making the water more dense, so it sinks and goes back south, might stop.

What might happen is that Europe would have an ice-age as the warm current keeps it nice and warm up there right now.

Having said that, global warming is not going to stop as the sun will emit the same amount and CO2 levels will not drop. But hey, isn't that fun, the biggest experiment ever?

Answer 2

Not heard that. I wonder what sort of scientists, I suspect not a climatologist, meteorologist, astrophysicist or other with direct knowledge of how global warming works.

One of the things about the greenhouse gases is that they remain in the atmosphere or a long time. It's a bit like the CFC's and other ozone depleting gases, although these were banned many years ago it's only now that the 'ozone hole' is begining to repair itself. Greenhouse gases are a bit like this in that they continue to affect our climate for many decades after they've been released, the worst ones will have an affect for the next 31,500 years but overall the average is 60 to 80 years.

So, we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to zero and the build up in the atmosphere would keep warming the planet for a long time to come.

Another problem with the ocean current theory is that the oceans take approx 600 years longer than the atmosphere to warm up - quite simply because they have such a massive volume of water (for every bit of water heated on the surface there's infinitely more down below that's not being heated).

The drivers of ocean currents are density and salinity, hence they're collectively known as thermohaline circulation (thermo means density and haline means salt). Changing the temp of the oceans will affect the density and could cause changes to the movement of the ocean currents. This isn't something that's well understood and at this point, any comment is purely conjecture. It's also important to remember that thermohaline circulation is merely a distribution mechanism for warm and cool water, it doesn't generate heat itself (strictly speaking it does but the amount is miniscule). So, if the ocean currents stopped what we'd find is some places would get hotter, others would get colder but overall there would be no effect.

Answer 3

It is certainly true that the oceans are getting warmer but how this will develop is open to debate.

What we do know is that as water gets warmer it expands. When an ocean gets warmer, sea levels all over the world must rise. That means that all low-lying areas are more at risk from flooding than before.

Most agricultural land and most of the largest cities in the world are just a few feet above sea level.

We will not be able to start to reverse the effect of global warming for another 50 years, assuming we do everything possible now to halt the emission of all greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The future is, at best, bleak, at worst, catastrophic, on a scale not seen since the mass extinction which killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Answer 4

The latest thinking on this:

Melting ice seems to be disrupting ocean currents very little. The most likely outcome is that the warming in Europe will proceed a little slower, but it will still warm.