By Patrick Donahue
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Atlantic Ocean current that
brings warmth from the tropics northward over parts of Western
Europe came to a halt for 10 days in 2004, bolstering a theory by
some experts that global warming will cause a slowdown in the
system and make the region colder and drier, the Guardian said.
Scientists led by Harry Bryden of the U.K.'s National
Oceanography Centre confirmed the temporary shutdown of the so-
called heat conveyor, which includes the Gulf Stream, the
newspaper said. The 2004 film ``The Day After Tomorrow'' depicts
a complete halt of the system causing calamity within a week,
while Bryden's group predicts it would take two decades to cool
the region as much as 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit).
``We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't
understand it,'' the paper cited Bryden as saying at a conference
this week in Birmingham, England, on rapid climate change.
The phenomenon is ``the most abrupt change in the whole
record'' of climate, scientist Lloyd Keigwin of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts was cited as saying by
the Guardian. The U.K. Natural Environment Research Council has
established 16 underwater stations in the Atlantic Ocean to
monitor the current's flow rate, the Guardian reported.
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Atlantic Ocean current that
brings warmth from the tropics northward over parts of Western
Europe came to a halt for 10 days in 2004, bolstering a theory by
some experts that global warming will cause a slowdown in the
system and make the region colder and drier, the Guardian said.
Scientists led by Harry Bryden of the U.K.'s National
Oceanography Centre confirmed the temporary shutdown of the so-
called heat conveyor, which includes the Gulf Stream, the
newspaper said. The 2004 film ``The Day After Tomorrow'' depicts
a complete halt of the system causing calamity within a week,
while Bryden's group predicts it would take two decades to cool
the region as much as 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit).
``We'd never seen anything like that before and we don't
understand it,'' the paper cited Bryden as saying at a conference
this week in Birmingham, England, on rapid climate change.
The phenomenon is ``the most abrupt change in the whole
record'' of climate, scientist Lloyd Keigwin of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts was cited as saying by
the Guardian. The U.K. Natural Environment Research Council has
established 16 underwater stations in the Atlantic Ocean to
monitor the current's flow rate, the Guardian reported.
