Lozier is a principal investigator in a five-year, National Science Foundation-funded study of the circulation pathways of North Atlantic currents, and has published findings from her work in Science, the Journal of Physical Oceanography and other leading journals.
Despite its inaccuracies, Lozier thinks “The Day After Tomorrow,” slated to open May 28, may prove beneficial to the policy debate about global warming by raising public awareness of the oceans’ role in climate and climate change.
“When people think about global warming, they think about the whole world getting warmer due to greenhouse gases. They may not realize that some parts will get warmer and some will get colder, some will get wetter and some will get drier, due in part to changes in ocean currents,” Lozier said.
The oceans store a tremendous amount of heat from the sun, and their currents act like a giant conveyor belt, redistributing that heat around the globe, she explained. The Gulf Stream, for example, carries tropical warmth far into the North Atlantic, giving western Europe a mild, moist climate despite its northerly latitude.
Current paths are driven by the prevailing winds and density differences that exist between cold and warm water, and salty and fresh water. Alter any of these factors, Lozier said, and a current’s path will change, altering over time the climate of lands in or near its path.
Her research — including a paper in the January 2004 issue of Geophysical Research Letters that documents the warming and salinification of Mediterranean waters — has identified subtle changes taking place in North Atlantic waters over the past 50 years. Waters at high latitudes, such as in the subpolar regions, are becoming colder, less salty and slightly less dense, while waters at low latitudes, such as those nearer the equator, are growing warmer, saltier and slightly denser.
“If this continues, it could, in theory, disrupt the circulation of North Atlantic currents and cause them to slow or eventually shut down,” Lozier said. “Earth goes in and out of ice ages, and this is a process that continues today. Only it doesn’t happen anywhere nearly as suddenly as it does in the movie. That’s pretty far-fetched. It’s like saying someone can run the mile in less than a second.”
From a Duke press release.
Otherwise known as geeks? Can’t be watching “13 going on 30” can we.
I remember having some in-depth discussions of how to treat time in a video game – “physics for game programmers” was one of the texts… Basically, even the devotees of “realistic physics” can’t afford to have game players sitting for three weeks waiting for their nuclear-powered rockets to meet up, for 90 seconds of action! So, time becomes fungible, sometimes going fast, sometimes slow. Though I’d think the producer here could have used a little more imagination to make it somewhat more realistic… oh well.
Excuse me, but you keep saying the Gulf Stream warms European air. Just how much does the Gulf Stream warm the air? Where is the European air coming from?
I believe in the northern hemisphere, at least at temperate latitudes, the general circulation of air is from west to east. You see weather patterns moving that way generally across North America, for example. The warm water of the gulf stream, after heading up the US eastern seaboard, moves out into the atlantic ocean. That warm water, plus the heat generated by the thermohaline ciruclation, heats the air above the atlantic ocean more than you would expect, and that warm air then moves on to Europe. That’s why London is reasonably warm, and yet at 51.5 degrees north it is further north than the entire continental US – much further north than Ottawa, Canada (45.4 degrees), and several degrees north of Victoria and Vancouver, in western Canada, which have the warmer coastal climate.