2/18/2023 0 Comments Wetter washington“The future will depend on air pollution and global warming, as well as ocean circulation changes. “A lot of the changes in the recent past have been due to air pollution,” Frierson said. A recent study by Frierson and collaborators looked at how pollution from the industrial revolution blocked sunlight to the Northern Hemisphere in the 1970s and ’80s and shifted tropical rains to the south. NASA Earth Observatoryįrierson’s earlier work shows how the changing temperature balance between hemispheres influences tropical rainfall. “This is really just another part of a big, growing body of evidence that’s come out in the last 10 or 15 years showing how important high latitudes are for other parts of the world,” Frierson said.Ī satellite picture of clouds shows a narrow band of intense rainfall, known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, just north of the equator. ![]() The slowdown of the currents is predicted because increasing rain and freshwater in the North Atlantic would make the water less dense and less prone to sinking. While a sudden shutdown like in the movie won’t happen, a gradual slowing – which the recent United Nations report said was “very likely” by 2100 – could shift tropical rains south, the study suggests, as it probably has in the past. The ocean current they found to be responsible was made famous in the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” in which the premise was that the overturning circulation shut down and New York froze over. For such a major feature there’s usually a simpler explanation,” Frierson said. “But at the same time, a lot of people didn’t really believe that explanation because it’s kind of a complicated argument.
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