A Chilling Possibility
March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades.
That's the paradoxical scenario gaining credibility among many climate scientists. The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver--comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants--Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.
Some scientists believe this shift in ocean currents could come surprisingly soon--within as little as 20 years, according to Robert Gagosian, president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Others doubt it will happen at all. Even so, the Pentagon is taking notice. Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security.
"It's difficult to predict what will happen," cautions Donald Cavalieri, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "because the Arctic and North Atlantic are very complex systems with many interactions between the land, the sea, and the atmosphere. But the facts do suggest that the changes we're seeing in the Arctic could potentially affect currents that warm Western Europe, and that's gotten a lot of people concerned."
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm?list978252
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