There have been a few items in the media lately speculating on the
effect on the UK climate in the event cold mel****er from the arctic
blocks off the gulf stream.

The upshot seems to be that the UK would experience winters like
southern Canada - e.g. 20 deg below, sea ice etc. But what no-one has
commented on is what the summers will be like.

Will they be much cooler too? Will we have Canadian style very hot
summers, or will our island location automatically cool them down?.
Maybe they'll stay the same?

Anyone care to hazard an educated guess?

"Bruco" wrote in message
...
There have been a few items in the media lately speculating on the
effect on the UK climate in the event cold mel****er from the arctic
blocks off the gulf stream.


It's not shutting down, just being outsourced to India to keep the costs
down.

In all seriousness as I understood the mechanism the seas around Britain
more so above Scotland to Arctic will be a lot cooler. If this means
increased blocking in the Summer than it will be every bit as hot in a usual
summer blocking scenario bar the fact the water between UK and Europe will
be colder. But with seas around and more so to the North much colder I
would imagine any NW, N and NE would be bleed'in cool whistling around
Whitby in July.

It's pure conjecture at the moment, and if it does happen I would have
thought the main change would be blocking and mobility periods i.e..blocking
in the winter very cold and westerly mobility through Summer bloody
miserable.
Hey what do I know?

Bruco wrote:
There have been a few items in the media lately speculating on the
effect on the UK climate in the event cold mel****er from the arctic
blocks off the gulf stream.

The upshot seems to be that the UK would experience winters like
southern Canada - e.g. 20 deg below, sea ice etc. But what no-one has
commented on is what the summers will be like.

Will they be much cooler too? Will we have Canadian style very hot
summers, or will our island location automatically cool them down?.
Maybe they'll stay the same?

Anyone care to hazard an educated guess?

I am given to understand that the climate of Norway is warmer than the
climate of Sweden because the former benefits from the gulf stream while
the latter does not.

The above would seem to allow a comparison of 'a Scandinavian country'
with and without the gulf stream.

Neither is an island of course ... but one cannot have everything.

--
Gianna

Will they be much cooler too? Will we have Canadian style very hot
summers

I'd imagine the more maritime parts of southern Canada would be a good
analogy.

Does Canada actually have 'very hot' summers or just somewhat warmer
than north-west Europe? My experience (two weeks in Montreal in August
1994) was not too dissimilar to a similar period in southern England,
but maybe that was atypical....

11/8/94 Sunny with cumulus, low humidity, about 23C
12/8/94 Sunny, more humid and hazy, cumulus cloud, about 25C
13/8/94 Warm and humid, cloudy, occasional downpours about 27C
14/8/94 Overnight heavy rain, cool with scattered showers about 19C
15/8/94 cloudy with stratocumulus about 19C
16/8/94 see 11/8/94
17/8/94 see 12/8/94
18/8/94 cloudy (altostratus). about 25C
19/8/94 hazy and fairly hot. about 26C
20/8/94 hot and very humid. Isolated thunderstorms. about 30C
21/8/94 see 14/8/94
22/8/94 and 23/8/94 - see 11/8/94

Nick

Purely guessing, but I'd guess the lack of Gulf Stream would weaken
lows at all seasons but primarily autumn/winter when they are at their
strongest.

Maybe summer lows would be more intense as the contrast between hot
land (southern Europe) and cool seas (the Atlantic) would be greater,
hence more summer downpours and cooler maritime airmasses, but
continental airmasses as warm as now? The overall effect of this would
be cooler and wetter but more thundery summers, perhaps? Gone would be
the near-25C returning polar-maritime summer days of recent years I
suspect.

Nick

so the worst that could happen
is that our weather could become like that of Seattle and Vancouver,

I believe that area has almost the same weather as us. Winter frontal
systems and rainfall are I believe as frequent, but lighter as the sea
is less warm.

Nick

"Bruco" wrote in message
...
There have been a few items in the media lately speculating on the
effect on the UK climate in the event cold mel****er from the arctic
blocks off the gulf stream.

The upshot seems to be that the UK would experience winters like
southern Canada - e.g. 20 deg below, sea ice etc. But what no-one has
commented on is what the summers will be like.

Will they be much cooler too? Will we have Canadian style very hot
summers, or will our island location automatically cool them down?.
Maybe they'll stay the same?

Anyone care to hazard an educated guess?

The Canada you are thinking of is on the west coast of a continent, but
we are on the east coast of Eurasia, so the worst that could happen
is that our weather could become like that of Seattle and Vancouver,
not that of New York and Ottawa.

Moreover, if the North Atlantic Drift did shutdown, the North Atlantic
would warm, and the south-westerly flow reaching the British Isles
would be passing over warmer ocean rather than cooler, and so
we would warm not cool.

I don't know if you saw the program on BBC 4 tonight, but there
the scientists were puzzling why the temperature jumped 20C,
not why it dropped 10C. The danger is a rapid warming, not a
cooling. Even Wally Broecker, who first proposed that we
might all freeze when the THC shut down is now repenting for
his sins. See;

Richard A. Kerr "EUROPEAN CLIMATE:
Mild Winters Mostly Hot Air, Not Gulf Stream"
Science 27 September 2002 297: 2202
[DOI: 10.1126/science.297.5590.2202] (in News Focus)
The Gulf Stream does little to moderate European winters, it
turns out, and the atmosphere plays a bigger role in climate
change than once thought. The new analysis, to appear in
next month's Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological
Society, will no doubt stoke the debate over the relative role
of the Gulf Stream and the tropics in climate change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/297/5590/2202.pdf

"Geochemist Wallace Broecker
of Lamont has long invoked a sudden shutdown
of the Gulf Stream and its larger conveyor
belt to explain abrupt climate shifts
during the last ice age. In his scheme, the loss
of Gulf Stream heat simply cooled everything
down, including large parts of the
Southern Hemisphere. "Broecker's simple
[conveyor] diagram captured people's imaginations,
but it's a bit simplistic," says Sutton.
Broecker now agrees. "I apologize for
my previous sins," he has said. Still, he remains
convinced that the trigger of abrupt
climate change, although not necessarily the
sole driving force, lies in the North Atlantic."

Cheers, Alastair.

The Canada you are thinking of is on the west coast of a continent, but
we are on the east
??????

coast of Eurasia

Anne

wrote in message
oups.com...
so the worst that could happen
is that our weather could become like that of Seattle and Vancouver,

I believe that area has almost the same weather as us. Winter frontal
systems and rainfall are I believe as frequent, but lighter as the sea
is less warm.

Exactly, the THC makes no difference to the British climate. We
are warmer because we are down wind of an ocean, unlike Labrador
which is down wind of a continent.

The THC is slowing down. See how the 7C isotherm is struggling to
reach up into the GIN Seas.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/brack5.html
But that is making us warmer, not cooler. The melting of the Arctic
sea ice cannot cause cooling, because if it did it would refreeze and
we would warm up again.

But the crazy idea that global warming can cause cooling is so
imbedded in everyone's minds now, that I am wasting my time
preaching against it. I might as well p..s into the wind :-(

Cheers, Alastair.





Nick

Gianna wrote:

Bruco wrote:
There have been a few items in the media lately speculating on the
effect on the UK climate in the event cold mel****er from the arctic
blocks off the gulf stream.

Recent research at Southampton indicates that sea surface currents are
not as constant as we believe. Although I have no access to the data it
is in my opinion the reason why we have seasons of mists and mellow
fruitfullness.

And the knock back to this is that the hurricane season is more linked
to mists and fogs in the UK and along the west coast of northern Europe
than it is to the position of the sun over the lower regions of the
North Atlantic.

The upshot seems to be that the UK would experience winters like
southern Canada - e.g. 20 deg below, sea ice etc. But what no-one has
commented on is what the summers will be like.

No the upshot seems to be that without the current flowing, heat will
not be so readily carried away.

Will they be much cooler too? Will we have Canadian style very hot
summers, or will our island location automatically cool them down?.
Maybe they'll stay the same?

Anyone care to hazard an educated guess?

Whichever way it goes the matrix will tend to be more stable. Without
the constant stream of cyclones reaching northern Europe from Canada
the question is: What will happen to Canada?

Greenland might become habitable or might it sumerge under the weight
of it's new snow-cap. A situation only ameliorated by the solution of
snow in the sea or the fact that Greenland would no longer exist except
as a shoal at Low Water twice a month.

Giving rise no doubt to a new race of fish-men to colonise the planet
when we have done with it.

I am given to understand that the climate of Norway is warmer than the
climate of Sweden because the former benefits from the gulf stream while
the latter does not.

The above would seem to allow a comparison of 'a Scandinavian country'
with and without the gulf stream.

Neither is an island of course ... but one cannot have everything.

Except for the aerofoil effect of the mountains. And of course the same
effect goes double for the whole of Canada, which has both the Rockies
and a vast plain.