In direct opposition to global warming, which I believe is now an established dire problem, climate change may have the opposite effect on England and may cause the English Channel to freeze over with the Arctic ice pack floating down the Channel during winter in the 2050s.
At the moment Great Britain has a far milder climate than parts of Canada or Russia which are both at about the same latitude because Britain has the benefit of relatively warm ocean currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc). These currents carry warm water up from the equator.
Climate change is weakening this current because of melting ice caps in Greenland. The resultant cold freshwater flows into the North Atlantic where it heads south which may cause Amoc to collapse during this century.
But in July researchers at the University of Copenhagen studied the temperature of the sea surface and found that it may collapse a lot sooner in the 2050s.
Further research at Utrecht had the goal of finding other indicators of an impending Amoc collapse. They ran a computer simulation and added more freshwater to the current until it collapsed.
They found that up to 40 years before the collapse in their computer model an early warning signal showed up. This signal is already showing in the Atlantic Ocean which would suggest that the current may be on course to collapse much sooner than previously thought.
The study projected what would happen on the collapse of Amoc and how it would affect Europe’s climate.
They decided that it would plunge the continent into a century long descent into freezing conditions. The temperature would be lowered by 1°C every decade which is faster than the 0.2°C for each decade that the climate is currently warming at.
This sharp cooling would be most severe in northern regions and temperatures in London would fall by 7°C. In winter, in the English Channel there would be Arctic ice pack!
Comment: it looks like a new ice age is about to embrace England right to the south coast which is the exact opposite to global warming. At the moment global warming is simply giving the UK a much worse climate of more rain and more wind, warmer but wetter winters and some very, very hot summer days; freakishly hot as a friend of mine said not long ago.
If these projections are correct today’s children should be prepared.
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