[lancewiggs]

Look at London. Draw a line west. Compare climates. Now do the same for New York and go East. Ocean currents are what keeps London warm and NYC cool.

So this is a huge deal. I’ve been down to the Southern Ocean, lectured all the way by scientists.

North of the Antarctic is the only place on earth where the sea can rotate completely around the world without hitting a land mass, and it is deemed the engine of the world’s oceans. Those oceans are what have absorbed most of the excess CO2 that we’ve emitted, and a lot captured has been buried in deep ocean. But the ocean warms, and can capture less CO2, and bad days are ahead.

This news signals not just a slowing in that absorption for an area, which not just sends more CO2 into the atmosphere, but has more terrifyingly unknown downstream implications for other ocean streams.

[pfdietz]

How do ocean currents keep NYC cool? I thought it was perturbation of atmospheric circulation by the Rocky Mountains, which causes higher latitude air to sweep down over eastern North America.

For that matter, the subsequent northward return of the air also causes some warming in Europe, not just warming from the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream actually warms the eastern US, btw.

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-source-of-euro...