LAT: Evidence of Slowing Ocean Currents Alarms Scientists

Evidence of Slowing Ocean Currents Alarms Scientists
By Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer


The powerful ocean currents that transport heat around the globe and keep northern Europe's weather relatively mild appear to be weakening, according to a new scientific report.

A group of British oceanographers surveyed a section of the Atlantic Ocean stretching from Africa to the Bahamas that has been studied periodically since 1957 and found the overall movement of water had slowed 30% in the past five decades.

The report, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, is the first evidence of such a slowdown.

Computer models have long predicted that the warming of the oceans and the "freshening" of the seas with water from melting glaciers and increased precipitation — all linked to the warming of the Earth by greenhouse gases — could slow the currents, but scientists did not expect to see such changes so soon.

"The result is alarming," Detlef Quadfasel, a climate expert at the University of Munich, wrote in a commentary accompanying the research, and provides "worrying support for computer models."...