Arctic Ocean freshwater will cause "unpredictable" changes in climate

Weather here has been all over. This story is troubling because I saw the Al Gore movie and remember the Greenland example.I spent two years in Alaska and now the last year back in the desert. Things are changing all over and the people that have lived in the places notice it. I feel sorry for our kids and kids kids. Well, one more reason to ride my bike to work.
(and oil hit 122.00 today)

The way things are going... I don't think we will need to worry about it!

The Nuclear waste water released in ocean from Japan will make all the changes the earth needs, Mother-Earth will shake us off like fleas on a dog!

HAVE A NICE No Government budget BROKE DAY!~

So whats going to change first. ?? .Mankind or the Earth's ability to sustain us??

I'm just surprised at how many people fall for this government funded nonsense.

Oh no, the Irish have enough problems already, with their economy! They can't have their palm trees freeze over on the West Coast! I know, the subject is serious, but there's just too much going on to worry about this, also, right now.

This melting could already be having a chain reaction effect. The sheer weight that is lost can effect the earths crust. This in turn influences volcanic activity and earthquakes. Also, as the land beneath is exposed it adds to the amount of methane in the atmosphere. Once again, don't mess with Mother Nature.

In our earth's previous history, on occasion there have been severe changes to the environment.

If it happens slowly enough, many of the gazillions of critters and their societies/milli-ecocystems can adapt, evolve, and survive. If enough survive and successfully evolve, the changes in the overall earth's ecosystem/environment can be small.

However, if the change is abrupt--say, by a catastrophic event--, if too many critters and their societies are unable to adapt and evolve, then, like an exponential domino set-up, the earth's ecosystem starts collapsing.

In some events, the collapse was very severe and it took many millions of years for our earth's many environments to become re-habitated and stability established. One thing for sure--what became established, in many cases, was very different from what was there before.

I'm not an expert on this, but it is one of my fascinations, and I've read a lot about it.

I can't think of any of these events, where there was a significant collapse of a large percentage of our ecosystems, where the ecosystem that at least partially survived was NOT the ocean.

In other words, it seems that the ocean is our earth's buffer for survival.

At least part of the critters/ecosystems in the deepest parts of the ocean appear to have survived when shallower ocean ecosystems did not.

This is what is driving me ape-shit about Japan and the lack of international oversight on how they are handling their clusterfuck of a nuclear disaster at Fukushima:

If enough of the radioactive material makes its way down to the deepest parts of the ocean, and if enough damage has already been done to the rest of the ecosystems of the, will our planet have been killed by the avarice and greed of Japan, TEPCO, GE--who have handled this clusterfuck-express disaster, and by the other nations' governments who were too timid to stand up and provide interventional oversight?

This requires a broad solution encompassing all humanity. Cutting carbon can be accomplished by a carbon exchange. We need more vaccines for poor countries to decrease net carbon release from early deaths, and we need to prepare to grow new scientifically proven strains of food in a post global warming meltdown era.

As JanForGore posted: These are people that are so afraid of science, so devoid of logic and reason, so anesthetized by their own ideological rhetoric that we are now entering a dangerous period."

That's the understatement of the century. All we have to do is look at Japan to see what tons of Ocean water can do to humanity in just minutes.

Thanks for the update and reminder. I saw that the Artic's (I think) Ozone layer was depleted 40% as well.

I find it absolutely frustrating,heartbreaking, and terrifying that here we are, in the midst of erratic weather changes everywhere, and yet we are still busy debating the cause and trying to decide which alternative source of energy we should use. This should have been decided on and implemented years ago.

AMSTERDAM — Scientists are monitoring a massive pool of fresh water in the Arctic Ocean that could spill into the Atlantic and potentially alter the key ocean currents that give Western Europe its moderate climate.

The oceanographers said Tuesday the unusual accumulation has been caused by Siberian and Canadian rivers dumping more water into the Arctic and from melting sea ice. Both are consequences of global warming.

If it flushes into the Atlantic, the infusion of fresh water could, in the worst case, change the ocean current that brings warmth from the tropics to European shores, said Laura De Steur of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

German researcher Benjamin Rabe, of the Alfred Wegener Institute, said the Arctic's fresh water content had increased 20 percent since the 1990s — about 8,400 cubic kilometers. That is the equivalent of all the water in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron together or double the volume of water in Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake.

Increased runoff from the great northern rivers "could potentially impact the large scale ocean circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. This is important for us in Western Europe because our climate is pretty much dictated by the Thermohaline ocean circulation," said De Steur.

The Thermohaline current loops like a conveyer belt from the tropics to the North Atlantic, driven by the differences in salt content and wind patterns. Warm water from the south gains in salinity and grows heavier as it cools. At its northern end, the current is further chilled by cold air and sinks, warming again and rising as it travels south.

That cycle could be affected when the pool of fresh water is released into the Atlantic, said De Steur and Rabe. The icy water has been kept bottled up in the Arctic by wind patterns, which have not shifted their general clockwise direction for the unusually long time of 12 years. Normally, the winds change at intervals of five to 10 years.

The two scientists spoke to The Associated Press as part of a European Union initiative, called Clamer, to collate and publicize information from 300 EU-funded research projects conducted over the last 13 years on climate change and marine ecology. Rabe and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, published their research last year in the journal Deep Sea Research on the effects of higher river runoff on ocean salinity.

De Steur said most of the excess fresh water has collected in the Canada Basin, but in the last three years changes also have been noticed in the Eurasian side of the Arctic Ocean.

"It's important to monitor this to see if this can be transported to the Atlantic, where it might potentially effect the Gulf Stream and the Thermohaline circulation," she said.

Rabe cautioned that scientists have not been studying the situation long enough to predict what may happen, and the results of model simulations also were inconclusive.

"Will Cause"?
IS causing!
Like last January, when a high pressure system moved up the Pacific into the Arctic, pushing the cold air down into temperate zones, producing the hottest January on record in the Arctic and ice age-like weather across America, Europe and Asia.
And the deniers chanted "So much for global warming" not having a clue.

We have "watched" in silence for quite some time, seeing the slight changes in your climates. Our species harvested the resources of our planet until there was literally nothing left. Despite the knowledge that our planet's mantle was honeycombed from mining processes, we trusted that our leaders knew what they were doing and that we were safe because they informed us that we were.

Our way of life had such great cost upon on our planet, to the point that shield generators we used to stabilize the mantle, keeping our world from collapsing in upon itself. Soon, our power sources began to dry up and the shields began to weaken.

There was no slow crumbling of our world, had there been, perhaps we could have found a means to escape, to continue as a species. Instead, with one soft spot in the sheilds, a cascading effect took place in a matter of hours. In horror, our world imploded in upon itself, taking our entire species into its own destruction.

How we came to be as we are now, we do not know. There are many of us, trapped as nothing more than a host of conscienceness and awareness. Somehow, we have been able to communicate through a few of your species, yet we feel reserved in becoming involved.

We have seen the good in many of you, trying to protect and save your world, understanding the delicate balances between the many components of your environment. There are many however, that have no care and would destroy your world for they own immediate gain.

As to the subject of the article above, the increasing amount of freshwater in this Arctic "lake" should be see as very troubling indeed. As mentioned, this freshwater lake acts as a cap to keep the warmer, as well as saltier waters below the Arctic region. This is a very delicate balance which maintains a somewhat predictable climate worldwide.

Should the pressure within this "cap" become to great, it will flood out into the lower, warmer waters. This flood will cool the average sea tempartures, quite likely causing a slow-down in the global circulation of sea waters. It is afterall, the circulation of the sea waters which does stabilze the different climates around the globe.

Should this freshwater cap push downwards, out of the Arctic, we would predict the imminent onset of a global cooling trend of massive proportion. In front of this massive cooling trend would be major weather turmoil in all regions around the globe. Survival would be possible, but only for a small few!

I suggest we move, (forceably if necessary), all the anti-climate changers to the low spots around the world.

and yet the oil junkie douchebags will still deny global warming even after there are no icecaps left.

This is in Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie.

We've been having unusually warm and dry weather these past three months in my neck of the woods. We're actually been having a drought, which is practically unheard of at this time of year.

I think it is already having somewhat of an effect.

This is very troubling . I worry for the future .