There is a heat wave going on throughout Europe with the hottest temperatures ever recorded. At the same time the water temperatures at the Jersey shore are way below average:
Water temperatures at South Jersey beaches over the last two weeks have hovered in the high 50s and low 60s at a time of year when they are normally in the low 70s.
This is a bad sign for the Gulf Stream, which brings warm tropical water to Europe and is a major influence on the weather there.
These are all major signs that we are getting closer to the tipping point that William H. Calvin describes in the January '98 Atlantic monthly article: The Great Climate Flip-Flop.
Here an excerpt from one of his lectures:
Coming on stage now is a stunning example of how civilization must rescue itself. It dwarfs the three big scientific alerts from the 1970s about global warming, ozone loss, and acid rain. But until the 1990s, no one knew much about abrupt climate change, those past occasions when the whole world flipped out of a warm-and-wet climate like today’s into the alternate mode, which is like a worldwide version of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930s. There are big alterations in only 3-5 years. A few centuries later, the drought climate flips back into worldwide warm-and-wet, even more quickly. Unlike greenhouse warmings, the big flips have happened every few thousand years on average, though the most recent one was back before agriculture in 10,000 B.C. The next flip may arrive sooner than otherwise, thanks to our current warming trend. The northern extension of the Gulf Stream appears quite vulnerable to global warming in four different ways. An early warning might be a decline in this current. And according to two oceanographic studies published this last year, this vulnerable ocean current has been dramatically declining for the last 40-50 years, paralleling our global warming and rising CO2.
Wow, this is interesting/scary stuff. If you want to hear about the latest developments in that area you will be able to hear Professor William H. Calvin talk at the ACC2003 conference.
Topic: "Social Symbiosis, Stability and Foresight".
We may be in for some nasty weather and I will go out now and enjoy the good one while it lasts.
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