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Gulf Stream, laden with heat soaked up in the tropics, meanders up the east coasts of the United States and
Canada.
As it flows northward, the stream surrenders heat to the air. Because the prevailing North Atlantic
winds blow eastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe. That’s why many scientists believe winter
temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those
in North America at
the same latitude. Frigid Boston, for example, lies at almost precisely the same latitude as balmy Rome. And
some scientists say the heat also warms Americans and Canadians. “It’s a real mistake to think of this solely
as
a European phenomenon," says Joyce.
Having given up its heat to the air, the now-cooler water becomes denser and sinks into the North
Atlantic by a mile or more in a process oceanographers call thermohaline circulation. This massive column
of cascading cold is the main engine powering a deep-water current called the
Great Ocean Conveyor that
snakes through all the world’s oceans. But as the North Atlantic fills with fresh water, it grows less dense,
making the waters carried northward by the Gulf Stream less able to sink. The new mass of relatively fresh
water sits on top of the ocean
like a big thermal blanket, threatening the thermohaline circulation. That in
turn could make the Gulf Stream slow or veer southward. At some point, the whole system could simply
shut down, and do so quickly. “There is increasing evidence that we are getting closer to a transition point,
from which we can jump to a new state.”
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