Look! Science! (via The Hockey Schtick)
Huge ‘whirlpools’ in the ocean are driving the weather
11:08 27 June 2014 by Michael Slezak New Scientist
Giant “whirlpools” in the ocean, up to 500 kilometres across, are driving the world’s climate on a scale previously unimagined. We just don’t know exactly how yet.
The bodies of swirling water, called mesoscale eddies, are 100 km to 500 km in diameter. They form when patches of water are destabilised by obstacles like islands. The eddies carry huge volumes of water and heat across the oceans, until they slowly stop spinning over days or months and reintegrate with the surrounding water.
The assumption was that they gradually diffused the heat they carried in all directions as they travelled, which would hardly do anything to the climate. Now, for the first time, the amount of water and heat they carry has been measured and it turns out the eddies have a big effect after all. (snip)
It’s not clear what this means for the weather, but it is likely to be significant. Some of the world’s biggest sources of climate variability, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, are powered by heat moving around the oceans, driven by wind and ocean currents. The eddies could have similar effects, says Qiu, and once we understand them it should help us create more accurate predictions of the regional effects of climate change.
As the Hockey Schtick notes
Amazing what climate scientists can discover about natural climate change by making measurements and observations instead of assuming what “the consensus” previously believed to be true. The junk output of climate models does not incorporate very important natural phenomena such as these newly discovered large eddies or ocean and atmospheric oscillations, which are the true drivers of weather and climate, not CO2.
Next up, Warmists will surely tell us that the whirpools have increased and have a bigger impact because of Mankind’s “carbon pollution” output.
