OCEAN ‘COLD BLOB’ BEHIND HEATWAVE?
A 2016 STUDY SUGGESTED THAT COLD ATLANTIC ANOMALIES WERE A ‘COMMON PRECURSOR’ TO MAJOR HEATWAVES THAT HAD HIT EUROPE SINCE THE 1980S.
Daily TribuneA 2016 STUDY SUGGESTED THAT COLD ATLANTIC ANOMALIES WERE A ‘COMMON PRECURSOR’ TO MAJOR HEATWAVES THAT HAD HIT EUROPE SINCE THE 1980S.
PARIS, France (AFP) — The heatwave battering Europe may have an unlikely partner-in-crime: A patch of cold ocean water south of Iceland and Greenland that can influence weather patterns over the continent.
Often called the “cold blob,” this swath of water in the North Atlantic has bucked the global warming trend, cooling even as the planet’s temperatures rise due to human-induced climate change.
A recent study reinforced concerns that it could signal a weakening of a key Atlantic Ocean current system that helps regulate the planet’s climate.
A shutdown of this conveyor belt of ocean currents, known as Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, could potentially lead to harsher winters in northern Europe in the future, scientists say.
But researchers have also explored the cold blob’s connection to heatwaves in Europe, finding that extreme hot spells have coincided with periods when these waters west of Britain were unusually cold.
“A cold Atlantic doesn’t necessarily mean a colder Europe,” Gerard McCarthy, oceanographer at Ireland’s Maynooth University, told Agence France-Presse.
“That cold isn’t a kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card in terms of global warming. Some of the hot extremes can actually be exacerbated by this cold blob in the Atlantic,” McCarthy said.