You may know the factoid that New York City and Rome sit at approximately the same latitude (40° N for New York, 41° N for Rome), yet Rome’s climate is warm year-round, while New York’s is temperate, and that this is the effect of the Gulf Stream, which is the primary engine that keeps Europe from turning into one big glacier. You may also know that one of the favorite doomsday bugaboos of panic-mongers everywhere is that the Gulf Stream is in danger of simply stopping at any moment, plunging the world into calamity. There was even a cheesy disaster movie about this scenario a few years ago.
Now, according to this BBC story, scientists have collected enough data to determine that there’s no apparent slowing down of the Gulf Stream whatsoever. Data collected over the last decade or so shows only minor seasonal variations and not any pattern of significant slowdown of the current, but scientists are a bit surprised at just how much variability they do see.
But don’t despair, there’s still that giant rock shear tidal wave that is sure to kill us all any day now.
