So, what else is the Beaufort Gyre (which, you’ll remember, is north of
Alaska) doing to The World As We Know It?
Well, it’s messing up the Arctic jet stream. Being from the midwest US,
I’ve heard plenty of winter weather forecasts talking about the Arctic jet
stream dipping below the Canadian border and bringing truly frigid blasts to
the North American plains. Since I still have friends and family living in that
region, I pay attention to the winter weather that happens there. Last year was
particularly brutal, with that jet stream going much further south than I
remember it doing in the past. It wasn’t just the northern states like the
Dakotas, Michigan and maybe Nebraska hunkering down against Arctic-type
temperatures, they were reaching into Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana...
How can that possibly mean the climate is warming? Let me remind you
that climate and weather are not the same thing. Weather happens on a much
smaller scale than climate. As for that Arctic jet stream coming south before
returning north, that air gets (relatively) warmed up. Coming so far south, it
gets a lot warmer than it normally does, so when it does go north again, it
transfers the warmth it gathered to the area it goes; the arctic. More melting.
Earth’s polar ice caps serve a purpose; sunlight is reflected from
their white surface, so they act as a ‘cooling’ agent for the entire globe. The
more this ice melts and reveals darker-colored water and land, the less cooling
is available for the entire planet. Get it? The more snow and ice melts, the
more likely more snow and ice will melt. Until there is no more snow and ice to
help keep Earth’s temperature moderated.
The really scary part is what happens to the land when all that snow
and ice melts. If Greenland’s ice cap melts, the sea level would rise by 20
feet (6.1 m). At its current rate of melt, the Arctic Ocean could be completely
ice free by 2040. That’s only 22 years! If all the ice of Antarctica melted,
the seas would rise by 200 ft (61 m).
With a sea level rise of only 6 feet (1.8 m), most large cities would
be flooded. So, where do you live? I currently live in the center of the
Florida peninsula, which would still be here after 6 feet of sea level rise...
but loooooong gone by the time all the ice melts. Maybe I should start cleaning
out stuff I won’t be needing in my old age, so that it’ll be easier to move
north, once that becomes necessary.
By then, New Orleans would be a bay reaching almost as far north as the
Missouri boot. The Netherlands would be entirely below sea level, but much of
it is now. Hope they have plans for building new, much taller dykes. Australia
will be a doughnut, with land surrounding an inland sea. The Amazon rainforest
will become the Amazon Sea, and Buenos Aires in Argentina will mean a huge bay.
Those are the easy things to notice on the map.
At one time, I found an interactive map showing what parts of the world
would be underwater, and the results would change depending on how much you
chose to raise the sea level. It didn’t seem too alarming, but I think it only
allowed you to raise the sea level by 9 meters.
Alas, I neglected to bookmark that page. When I went looking for it to
link to this blog, I found lots and lots of pages with ‘interactive global sea
level rise maps’. That means more and more scientists (and others) have been
looking at this scenario seriously, and taking the possible sea level rise much
higher. Much more ice than that covering Greenland has been and is and will
melt, so 9 meters could just be a drop in the bucket.
Water isn’t the only thing that will change. Next time, I’ll examine
something else from my research about climate change.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1792312/-Warm-ocean-water-has-penetrated-deep-into-the-Arctic-interior-portending-year-round-loss-of-sea-ice
http://www.softschools.com/facts/environmental_science/polar_ice_caps_facts/2894/
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