Atlantic Current Can Shut Down For Centuries, Disrupting Climate

摘要

For decades, climate scientists have cast a worried eye at the grand ocean circulation that draws warm southern waters into the North Atlantic. A shutdown due to global warm- ing-a possibility hinted at by some climate models-would not bury Manhattan under a tsunami of ice, as one Hollywood disaster movie had it. But it would unsettle climate around the North Atlantic and beyond. Now, researchers have hard evidence that the real Atlantic circulation did indeed abruptly slow or perhaps even stop for centuries at a time more man 100,000 years ago, when the world was only a bit warmer than today.