SCC Volume 3.4
During the summer of 2023 media announced that the Gulf Stream should disappear already in 2025. A colder climate was expected in Northern Europe. This was based on a paper by two Danish researchers who had discovered that the sea surface temperature south of Greenland did not increase as on the rest of the globe.
Cooling is also observed at the opening of the Barents Sea south of Svalbard. There the column temperature of the sea has decreased one degree since its peak in 2006, and the salinity has decreased. This means that less warm saltwater is entering the Barents Sea, and the outflow along the east cost of Greenland is cooling. We interpreted this as a sign of weakening of the Northern Branch (NB) of the Gulf Stream (GS). This may evolve into a Gulf Stream Beat (GSB), where heat is diverted from the NB to the southern branch (SB) of the GS. A GSB takes place during deep and prolonged minima of solar activity. Such minima occur in periods when the Jovian planets force the Sun to move in a chaotic orbit around the solar system barycenter. A deep solar minimum is expected during this century, but our analysis of the minimum position of the ice edge in the Barents Sea indicates that the ice edge will not move as far south as in previous complete GSBs. During the chaotic solar orbit periods the Jovian planets experience double (2×2) and triple conjunctions. During these conjunctions there is historical evidence of extreme rain and flooding. A double conjunction in 2024 may explain the flooding experienced in Europe, Asia and North Africa in 2023.
Continue Reading: Weaker Gulf Stream and Weather Extremes – Forced by the Planets
by Jan-Erik Solheim.