Ocean Currents And Climate Change

(CBS)  "Everywhere you look there's a puzzle; everywhere you look there's beauty," says Eddy Carmack.

Carmack has been bringing that curiosity to the Arctic nearly every year since 1969. He's had close encounters with polar bears and taken icebreaking trips to the North Pole. Carmack is an expert in ocean currents, and he's got a simple message: What happens in the Arctic affects climate everywhere.

Even for Carmack, explaining the complexities of climate change could take a lifetime. But in the short time CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg had with him, the two went by helicopter to an ice floe off the coast of Greenland to get an idea of what's at stake.

"We're standing on a river of ice that's streaming out of the Arctic," he explained. "When it reaches the North Atlantic it's going to melt. It'll make the waters there fresher and lighter and affect the whole ocean circulation."

As the temperature of Arctic water increases, Carmack says, it can lead to more extreme weather around the planet, because oceans act as the earth's heating and cooling system.

Carmack says it's not a stretch, long term, to say that what's happening in the Arctic could have an impact on everything from hurricane patterns and strengths to drought in the West.

The Arctic Ocean was once thought to be isolated from the rest of the world's waterways. But scientists now know that it's intricately connected to both the Pacific and the Atlantic, and that even minor changes in the Arctic can affect those oceans as well.

The Arctic waters don't flow in a perfect shape, but rather zig and zag within our neighboring oceans through various "gateways." So as these waters warm, the effects for both climate and wildlife can transfer to the rest of the world. Carmack uses what he calls "folk science" to demonstrate this and to get school kids interested.

Bottles containing a short message from elementary students and Carmack's contact information are tossed overboard each time the ship stops to collect data.

To date, about 4,000 of the bottles have been tossed into the water; about 150 have been found.

On average, the bottles take about two years to be found. The places they show up might surprise you: from Norway to Alaska, France, and even Brazil. Unsuspecting citizens have become lab assistants in a global study.

It's a simple experiment that proves a serious concept: As these waters travel downstream, they carry consequences for all of us, proving our vital connection to the top of our world.

[au_fait]

when will scientist learn that they have a hypothesis and really do not have an understanding of what is occurring. They have trouble predicting weather 5 days from now.

[octavianfdlr]

On a more scientific note...

OK, gondellini and jimfinster, you''ve made your point about the Greenland ice cap. But carl994 was addressing sea ice, so his comments about "6 to 8 feet thick" do not indicate that he "needs a new encyclopedia." (Nor do your comments suggest that you need a new encyclopedia. I will pass on whether you need new reading glasses...)

The article said "a river of ice that''s streaming out of the Arctic." Can we conclude from this that the ice floe is sea ice? Or Greenland ice cap ice? It''s not likely from the Laurentian ice sheet: global warming put an end to that one many centuries ago.

[octavianfdlr]

This discussion is taking an interesting turn. Is this an attempt to promote the cheezy theory from "The Day After Tomorrow" that global warming will cause the next ice age?

Come to think of it, the special effects in that B movie were probably generated by computer. Doesn''t that make them "computer simulations" and as reliable as the simulations relied upon by the Global Warming pronouncements?

[jimfinster]

gondellini:

My thought exactly.
Poor Mr. Bakay either needs a new encyclopedia, or perhaps reading glasses :)

[gondellini]

what encyclopedia was that?

heres what a quick search turned up (sorry about the formatting)

Bibliographic Entry Result
(w/surrounding text) Standardized
Result
Lutgens, Frederick K., & Edward J. Tarbuck. The Atmosphere. 6th ed., 1995: 397. "Elsmitte, at the center of the Greenland ice cap, rests an elevation of almost 3,000 meters, and much of Antarctica is even higher." 3,000 m
"Ice Cap." World Book. Chicago: World Book, 2000: 19. "The ice cap has an average thickness of about 7,000 feet (2,100 m)." 2,100 m
(average)
"Fuchs and Hillary." The Grolier Student Library of Explorers and Exploration. Grolier, 1998: 71. "Throughout their trek, they took soundings which showed that the ice cap was up to 9,000 feet (2,700 m) thick, and that entire mountain ranges lay buried beneath the ice cap." 2,700 m
Bramwell, Martyn. Glaciers and Ice Caps. Belgium: Franklin Watts, 1986: 19. "The average thickness of the Antarctic ice is 2,000 m (6,500 feet), and the greatest measured thickness is more than 4,770 m (15,650 feet)." 4,470 m
(maximum)
Simon, Seymour. Icebergs and Glaciers. New York: Mulberry, 1987. "In some places, the Antarctic ice sheet is more than fifteen thousand feet thick." 4,500 m

[jairod]

It''s not just the polar ice caps, but also the glaciers. The antartic has many times more ice and snow than the norther polar ice cap. between the two, plus the loss of the glaciers, the addition of fresh water to the oceans is of significant proportions. It''s like backing up a dump truck of snow and ice to your saltwater pool.

[carl994]

My encyclopedia says artic ice averages 6 to 8 feet thick, with 6 feet near the South and 8 to 10 feet near the pole.

Assuming this drifts south into the North Atlantic Ocean, how can the melting of 8 feet of ice affect the salinity of ocean water thousands of feet deep? It would be akin to throwing a few icecubes into your salt water swimming pool.

Carl Bakay
Lafayette, LA