Re: OT: Oceanography stuff

G'day David,

 >Returning CO2...

To do a quick wrap up...

1. Water (laden with CO2 and other solubles) sinks in North Atlantic
(cold 
and dense thus sinks)
2. Deep ocean currents carry water down the Atlantic
3. Currents turn corner (are deflected deflected by the circumpolar 
currents, topography etc down there) and eventually end up heading north

along the bottom of the Pacific
5. As the waters have warmed a bit and because of land forms and other 
ocean current systems the water and gases from North Atlantic hundreds
of 
years before hand rises in the equatorial Pacific.
6. All those gases that have been safely locked away are back in the 
atmosphere...so if man has caused substantial warming imagine how its
going 
to go up once all those gases are released rather than just the % that 
stayed around and didn't get "buried" originally.

On top of that changes in global atmospheric conditions also change
current 
systems (with major consequences for "burial" of stuff and ocean 
productivity etc etc) so, for instance, you could see the deflection of
the 
Gulf Stream and as a result England ends up as frigid as the rest of the

Northern Hemisphere of the same latitudes in winter. As well as a lot of

other MAJOR changes, makes for some interesting thought games about what

the future environment really will look like ;)

 >I don't suppose that there is anything
 >that you could suggest reading on
 >this topic that a layman...could understand?

Off the top of my head no unfortunately, but doing a search on deep
ocean 
currents or Atlantic bottom water circulation might help.

 >(my fiancée cracked up with me using this term, her
 >mind's in the gutter <g>)

Well there's nothing too wrong with that ;)

 >Probably, but perhaps it was also
 >the Cachalot (Alan Dean Foster)
 >situation???

OK caught me out again, haven't read that either (sorry not much of a 
fiction reader until fairly recently).

Cheers

Beth

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Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
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