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FatalWishes
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The devil in the deep blue sea
BY ANTHONY R. WOODKnight Ridder News Service
| Quote From Source: | The last time the planet endured a dramatic temperature shift, with ice invading Europe and North America, there were no smokestacks and SUVs to blame.
But there were changes in a mighty engine that balances global temperatures, a meandering, mysterious force that flows unseen only a few miles off the beaches of Miami and Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Keys.
It's the fabled Gulf Stream. Traveled by whalers and sailors for centuries but never accurately charted until it aroused the curiosity of none other than Benjamin Franklin, the current has emerged in the last decade as a focal point for scientists studying global climate change.
The concerns about the state of the ocean today run so deep that an unprecedented international effort is underway from the Straits of Florida to Greenland to track changes in the North Atlantic.
And the Gulf Stream is a narrow but critical piece of the larger system: It moves warm surface water from the tropics toward the North Pole and pumps cold water back toward the equator in a deep-sea current -- a mechanism scientists have come to call the North Atlantic "conveyor belt.''
| | Click source url to view entire story. |
Source URL: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13567377.htm |
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posted on 1/8/2006 at 22:50
