December 9, 2005

Slowed Atlantic Currents May Herald Climate Change in Europe

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

The system of mammoth currents that shuttle heat around the Atlantic Ocean has weakened markedly over the past 16 years, a change that many researchers have expected to occur as a consequence of greenhouse warming.

Researchers at the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton, in England, reported last week that the conveyor-beltlike transport system has slowed by 30 percent, according to their analysis of recent ocean surveys. Harry L. Bryden, a professor of

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