by Hannah Harmon

Created on: September 21, 2009   Last Updated: September 24, 2009

The Real Effects of Global Warming

The world's top concern today about our future is global warming. Global warming seems to be close at hand, according to many of today's scientists.

They are not joking, and the evidence for global warming is getting harder to debate. Ice is vanishing from the arctic, and the temperatures have increased four to seven degrees in the past fifty years which is double the global average (Handwerk). There has already many ecosystems changing due to the rising temperatures. Will humans have to learn to adapt too, or is there a backup plan? Although it is more debated than global warming, a mini ice age could be the outcome of global warming instead of a continually heating planet. This theory is based on the slowing of the North Atlantic current.

Scientists are just recently realizing the effect that ocean currents have on the climate. Basically the idea of what will trigger the mini ice age is the extreme slowing of the North Atlantic current. The North Atlantic Current works like a conveyer belt. Its job is to move warm water from the tropic to the arctic. This warm water helps to keep temperatures warm in the northern hemisphere, especially around parts of Canada and Europe. Likewise, the current carries cool water from the Artic to the tropic to help keep the temperatures there cooler. There is a problem though. The conveyer belt is slowing down.

Research at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, found that the flow of warm ocean currents toward northwestern Europe has declined by fifty percent since the 1950s. In the same sense there appears to be a fifty percent reduction in the amount of cold, deep water flowing from the North Atlantic to the tropics. Also the researchers found a fifty percent increase in currents circulating within subtropical seas without reaching higher latitudes. More warm waters, that is, are staying put in the tropics (Owen).

In order to understand why the water isn't getting circulated, the process by which the conveyer moves must be examined. The key ingredients in this process are heat and salt. All the currents of the world are linked together by currents, with warm surface flows connecting to cold deep
currents. Winds and thermohaline circulation move the currents. The key element here is the slowing of thermohaline circulation which depends on the heat and salt previously mentioned. The conveyer of the ocean in question flows all the way to Greenland and Norway. As this warm water

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