The Gulf Stream transport of water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with 99% certainty that this weakening is more than expected from random chance, according to a new study.
  • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    “While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation,” Piecuch said. “We can see similar weakening indicated in climate models, but for this paper we were not able to put together the observational evidence that would really allow us to pinpoint the cause of the observed decline.”

    What observational evidence would prove it either way?

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      The scope of the study wasn’t wide enough to get definitive evidence that it was man-made climate change based, or simply natural periodicity of climate zones. The Earth has a shit load of climate data over thousands of years to sift through, and that costs money which may be outside of the budget of the study.

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    At least it hasn’t slowed down a crazy amount. 4% in 40 years seems like the least of our problems right now.

    • Lee Duna@lemmy.nzOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      4% in 40 Years is just a rookie number, the last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. We don’t even know when the Gulf Stream weakening starts to occur.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      Waiting until it’s slowed 100% isn’t helpful. At that point, you’re way beyond the point of no return for cascading climate collapses.

      4% is concerning because this sort of thing shouldn’t happen period, let alone over a relatively short period of 40 years. Think of it as an early warning. Except, it’s probably still too late to address the problem.

      With all of the carbon emissions put into the atmosphere since the dawn of fossil fuels, we’re literally seeing the effects of carbon from like 50-70 years ago. What will the gulf stream do in another 50-70 years once today’s carbon emissions start affecting climate?

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying that the ice caps are melting like 10% every 2 years, carbon and methane emissions are through the roof, sea life and birds are going extinct, the oceans are hitting triple digit temperatures, half of north america is on fire, people are dying of heat stroke, and on and on. Yes this sucks too but damn, look around.

    • SkyeStarfall
      3·
      1 year ago

      While true, we don’t know how it’s gonna progress in the future. It takes time for changes to really set in, and as time goes on the differences are larger as we emit a lot more pollution now than we did 40 years ago.

      It could be that there’s an inherent 30+ years lag, and we’re seeing just the start of changes. Either way, the fact that it is definitively getting weaker is worrying.