Gulf of Mexico Loop current broken

[sevensama]

An interesting article was posted on SOTT about the dangers of the oil spill, causing damage to the loop of the Gulf of Mexico;

Factual satellite images in the past several weeks are showing that the Gulf Loop Current is broken and may cease to function entirely! This will result in massive climate change and possibly an ice age for Europe! Major trouble brewing?? More freakish weather on its way??

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212458-Gulf-of-Mexico-Loop-Current-Broken-Risk-of-Global-Climate-Change-By-BP-Oil-Spill-

Since comparative analysis with past satellite data until may 2010 didn't show relevant anomalies, it might be therefore plausible to correlate the breaking of the Loop Current with the biochemical and physical action of the BP Oil Spill on the Gulf Stream. It is reasonable to foresee the threat that the breaking of a crucial warm stream as the Loop Current may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and instabilities due to strong non linearities which may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate.

As the article and the YT clip say, this might result in an ice age for Europe. I'm not so sure what to think about this exactly, other than that it looks like a plausible build-up of facts and that us Europeans might be in for a real treat - does anyone have something else to say on this?

 

[Laura]

We've been going on about the coming ice age on SOTT for YEARS now... scroll down the page until you see Al Gore on the left getting hit in the head with a comet. Read that series of articles starting at the bottom and working up. There's also lots about it on the forum here!

 

[Green_Manalishi]

As displayed both by the sea surface velocity maps and the sea surface height maps, the Loop Current broke down for the first time around May 18th generated a clock wise eddy, which is still active.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill in the Loop Current

19 May 2010
Scientists monitoring the US oil spill with ESA’s Envisat radar satellite say that it has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.

"With these images from space, we have visible proof that at least oil from the surface of the water has reached the current," said Dr Bertrand Chapron of Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

Dr Chapron and Dr Fabrice Collard of France's CLS have been combining surface roughness and current flow information with Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data of the area to monitor the proximity of the oil to the current.

In the ASAR image above, acquired on 18 May, a long tendril of the oil spill (outlined in white) extends down into the Loop Current (red arrow).

"We performed advanced processing methods on the images to display surface features like variations in roughness and velocity, which provides insight into the spatial structure of the spill and its transport by surface currents," Dr Collard explained.

From the ASAR images of 12 May and 15 May, the oil spill was observed stretching increasingly closer to the Loop Current, raising concerns that it could reach the current and be carried south towards coral reefs in the Florida Keys.

"Now that oil has entered the Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida within six days," Dr Chapron said. "Since Envisat ASAR, ERS-2 and other SAR satellites are systematically planned to acquire data over the area, we will monitor the situation continuously."

The scientists warn however that since the Loop Current is a very intense, deep ocean current, its turbulent waters will accelerate the mixing of the oil and water in the coming days.

"This might remove the oil film on the surface and prevent us from tracking it with satellites, but the pollution is likely to affect the coral reef marine ecosystem," Dr Collard said.

Combined efforts using satellite imagery and in-situ measurements of collected water samples will help to assess whether oil is in the deep waters of the ocean.

The Loop Current joins the Gulf Stream — the northern hemisphere’s most important ocean-current system — sparking fears that oil could enter this system and be carried up to the US East Coast.

The dates coincide, when the first oil was seen entering the Loop Current it started to brake.

 

[Ben]

When I saw that article at the top of the Sott page it filled me with dread, caught me quite by surprise. Then I read yesterday's C's session and I once again felt that feeling of rising panic and anxiety with my mind racing, it's quite strange because I have been reading and considering things of this nature for a few years now. Now it is viscerally, tangibly upon me. Time for some pipe breathing I think

 

[Laura]

The dates coincide, when the first oil was seen entering the Loop Current it started to brake.

Very good catch.

 

[Laura]

When I saw that article at the top of the Sott page it filled me with dread, caught me quite by surprise. Then I read yesterday's C's session and I once again felt that feeling of rising panic and anxiety with my mind racing, it's quite strange because I have been reading and considering things of this nature for a few years now. Now it is viscerally, tangibly upon me. Time for some pipe breathing I think

I know how you feel, Ben, and I've been reading and considering these things for a very long time.

Individually, none of us is in a position to do much of anything but it IS just possible that, together, we can make a non-linear disturbance in the force, so to say. We are still a relatively small group due to the fact that we've never been "on" about promoting the Cs or anything like that. But we do, now, have something that can help anyone and everyone, and that is the EE program, so I guess we should really start to do it. It's all we've got, really, but then... Dorothy only had a bucket of water to put out the fire.

 

[Ben]

Thanks Laura. I feel much better today but I think I would actually benefit from being in that state more often and learning how to use it.

 

[Arctodus]

I cannot find the Paper right now (I've forgotten the title) but there was a hypothesis that the Next Glacial epoch will be even more severe than any previous. A single unbroken sheet of ice will stretch from western Europe to Eastern North America. It will extend as far south as latitude 30 North in the North American Sea level areas. Possibly freezing over the Mediterranean and shoving up into Northern Africa. One could expect the Southern African and Australia lowlands to be heavily glaciated as well. All of New Zealand would be buried under ice.

Of course this does depend on prevailing oceanic and atmospheric currents. But if the authors are right.....get ready for a cryospheric invasion last seen more than 300 million to a half billion years ago. However, this would probably be the most intense glaciation before the planet slowly stabilizes back into a hothouse stage some 5 to 10 million years from now. The panama isthmus is going to rip away and africa is going to continue north rapidly by 5 million years from now or so. That will open up an equatorial current once again.

 

[dantem]

This news arrived on ANSA.it, one of the major news agencies in Italy, on 6 July 2010.

On the same day it was readily discussed on the Meteo.it forum. The Loop Current periodically bents and brakes by forming a smaller 'Eddy' or circular current as seen here. The real problem discovered by Gianluigi Zangari seems to be that this time the velocity and the temperature of the LC had a major drop than ever before, but what I haven't understood is whether the LC was broken ahead of time by the oil or not

 

[The rabbit]

This news arrived on ANSA.it, one of the major news agencies in Italy, on 6 July 2010.

but what I haven't understood is whether the LC was broken ahead of time by the oil or not

And there lies the rub :) The Cs have said that it has nothing to do with the oil spill and it has everything to do with the natural changes that are happening.

Interesting question you have set.

 

[Laura]

This news arrived on ANSA.it, one of the major news agencies in Italy, on 6 July 2010.

but what I haven't understood is whether the LC was broken ahead of time by the oil or not

And there lies the rub :) The Cs have said that it has nothing to do with the oil spill and it has everything to do with the natural changes that are happening.

Interesting question you have set.

Keep in mind that what the Cs said was rather precise and they did not say that the destruction of the loop current had nothing to do with the oil spill. Remember that the question was about the Gulf STREAM, the current in the Atlantic. Adding the break-up of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico to the already weak Gulf Stream would just be the straw on the camel's back.

 

[The rabbit]

This news arrived on ANSA.it, one of the major news agencies in Italy, on 6 July 2010.

but what I haven't understood is whether the LC was broken ahead of time by the oil or not

And there lies the rub :) The Cs have said that it has nothing to do with the oil spill and it has everything to do with the natural changes that are happening.

Interesting question you have set.

Keep in mind that what the Cs said was rather precise and they did not say that the destruction of the loop current had nothing to do with the oil spill. Remember that the question was about the Gulf STREAM, the current in the Atlantic. Adding the break-up of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico to the already weak Gulf Stream would just be the straw on the camel's back.

I stand corrected , should have gone back to the session first.

 

[go2]

Now, current temperature measurements for the Gulf Stream on the Atlantic Front (from 76 to 47 meridian) now appears to be about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than it was this time last year. Consequently, a direct causality nexus has now been established, between the stall of the Gulf Loop Current and this new temperature drop in the Gulf Stream on the Atlantic Front.

Does anyone have confirmation or sourcing on the 10 degrees Celsius year over year temperature drop of water in the Gulf Stream? If that number is accurate, it seems a massive disruption in energy flow into the North Atlantic.

 

[dantem]

There's a paper here (pdf) that keeps track of the breakings or 'ring separations' of the LC from 1973 to 1999. It would be curious to compare that with the most recent breakings.

edited:

There's another paper here that is a bit technical :/

At page 49 (19 on the pdf file) it seems to imply that the oil industry was in fact monitoring the Loop Current someway...
but I can read it wrong here:

Subsurface jets. Oey and Zhang [2004] examine a different
aspect of a warm eddy impinging upon a continental
slope: the generation of parasitic cyclones and jets. This finescale
process has apparently not been previously addressed.
The study was in part motivated by the curious occurrences
of unusually intense subsurface jets, speeds > 0.4 m s-1, at
z

 

[Steve M.]

I breezed through the posts, maybe the answer to my question below has been answered already.

Here are images from the last couple of days (currently August 30th).

http://argo.colorado.edu/~realtime/gifs_tmp/gom_ssh/gmt.4743.gif Image from Aug 28th (Saturday)
http://argo.colorado.edu/~realtime/gifs_tmp/gom_ssh/gmt.11775.gif Image from Yesterday (29th)

Updated the article here http://www.sott.net/articles/show/214379-Gulf-Loop-Current-Stalls-from-BP-Oil-Disaster-Global-Consequences-if-Current-Fails-to-Reorganize with the most updated image from the 29th.

Does anyone know if the current in the gulf has come back together since July 22nd at all, or has it continued broken after over a month?