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He sees you when you're sleeping (europe.pub)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/funny@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Continental versus marine climates. Water has a lot of thermal mass, and it moderates the diurnal and seasonal temperature swings in areas near bodies of water. With the jetstream moving weather west-to-east at these northern latitudes, air masses moving across Canada cool off over the land mass of the continent before hitting the central and eastern cities. It's also much warmer in the summer in those places, for the same reason.

Even if AMOC shuts off completely, Europe generally will be somewhat warmer in the winter, and cooler in the summer, than Canada.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Even if AMOC shuts off completely, Europe generally will be somewhat warmer in the winter, and cooler in the summer, than Canada.

    I hope you're right, but research has recently suggested that the Little Ice Age was caused by the AMOC shutting down in the early 1400s.

    The Little Ice Age was one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, a period of cooling that was particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. This cold spell, whose precise timeline scholars debate, but which seems to have set in around 600 years ago, was responsible for crop failures, famines and pandemics throughout Europe, resulting in misery and death for millions.

    ...

    But in the late 1300s, AMOC strengthened significantly [due to increased solar activity], which meant that far more warm water than usual was moving north, which in turn cause rapid arctic ice loss. Over the course of a few decades in the late 1300s and 1400s, vast amounts of ice were flushed out into the North Atlantic, which not only cooled the North Atlantic waters, but also diluted their saltiness, ultimately causing AMOC to collapse. It is this collapse that then triggered a substantial cooling.

    If this research is correct, losing the AMOC again could cause a huge crisis for Europe.

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  • [–] 3 points 23 hours ago

    Yes, I agree. No doubt that it'd cause a major crisis in Europe, and I didn't intend to imply otherwise. Its people, agriculture, buildings, and infrastructure are all adapted to the current climate, and a sudden shift will be very hard to handle. We saw that with the heat waves this past summer. Phoenix, Arizona routinely handles higher temperatures, but the buildings there are all equipped for it, while ventilation and air conditioning are not common in much of Europe.

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