Volume 250, February 3, 2024

The Kraken and the Erie Canal

With climate change, the ocean is warming, seas are rising, winds are wilder, waves are higher, currents are flowing stronger, and greater storms are raging. Ancient Greeks believed Oceanus, the ocean river, separated the known world from the unknown where sea monsters like the Kraken dwell. The ocean remains the mysterious wine-dark sea where we voyage out on the surface or survey from distant satellites, unable to see what lurks in the darkening depths below.  


A New York Times article evoked our ancestral fears: “The warming atmosphere is causing an arm of the powerful Gulf Stream to weaken. . . The northern arm of the Gulf Stream is but one tentacle of a larger, ocean-spanning tangle of currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.”


Some scientists fear that meltwater from Greenland is already inhibiting the northward flow of the Gulf Stream. They believe freshwater pooling over the briny sea will slow the current. They say one of the hallmarks of a shutting down of ocean currents is a cold blob of water they’ve identified beyond Newfoundland in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. “In short, the cold blob may signal that the northern arm of the Gulf Stream no longer arrives with the same strength to the North Atlantic.”


The end is nigh, according to their readings of Greenland ice cores and foraminifera sands. During the last ice age, around 22,000 years ago, ocean circulation stopped and started.  “The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.” If we do not change our ways, the great switch will be flipped; the threshold will be crossed, and rapid, cascading effects will follow to all corners of the globe. 

Should we fear that the melting Greenland ice will tip the delicate balance of hot and cold that defines not only the North Atlantic but also “life far and wide”? 



Let’s walk back the cat on Kraken-rattling and look at how more buoyant freshwater could impede the motion of saltier water, how meltwater from Greenland inhibits ocean currents, and why the cold blob in the North Atlantic (not be confused with a posse of cold-core eddies in the Sargassum Sea) threatens to upset the global balance.  


Fresh water is less dense than salty water. Off Brazil, fresh Amazon River water tongues out thirty miles over the Atlantic South Equatorial Current. Racing dinghy sailors look for a slippery sea, a patch of freshwater that may move differently than the tidal current. Scientists have changed their explanation from meltwater slowing currents to acting as an insulating blanket impeding the sinking “into the deep ocean, and that could ultimately disrupt the transport of heat to the north.” 

Greenland has an awesome amount of meltwater. One summer, the volume of meltwater could have covered all of California four feet deep. Because Greenland is more than five times the size of California, the water was actually eight to ten inches on top of the ice. 


The surface of Greenland’s ice sheet looks corrugated with rows of ice interlaced by water. The meltwater, pooled on the ice surface, is measured from satellites. When it freezes in October, it cannot be determined if more or less than 50% of the meltwater froze. With warmer summers, plants take up more water to photosynthesize carbon out of the atmosphere. No significant increase in meltwater reaching the ocean has been observed in Greenland, and the seawater tastes salty.

The cold blob is part of the Labrador Current barreling south with nutrient-rich water from the Arctic Ocean, where more sea ice forms in October, sinking more salty icy water. Cold water carries more oxygen. It is upwelled onto the Grand Banks, where the best fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean are found. 


Fears unfounded, melting Greenland ice will not tip the delicate balance of hot and cold that defines the North Atlantic. There is no switch we can throw quickly or angry beast to poke. 


Like a pickpocket’s jostle and sleight of hand, our attention is diverted, and we don’t know what we’ve lost until it’s gone. People were not deceived when large swaths of forests were cut down following the Civil War. George Perkins Marsh explained how the clear-cutting of forests would lead to desertification. Look what agriculture did to the once lush lands of the Sahara. "The operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon." 


Marsh argued that when vegetation and soils are removed, there will be insufficient groundwater to provide the Erie Canal with adequate depth for barges to operate, and New York’s burgeoning economy would suffer. The solution was to create the Adirondack State Park for watershed protection, to the chagrin of land barons.  


Let’s not be fooled again. One hundred billion tons of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is said to cause climate change. A global increase in soils and vegetation of 2% would restore the atmosphere to 350 parts per million carbon.

Fallen Forests and Rising Ocean Fury


Water vapor is the elephant in the climate change room that too few acknowledge because fluctuating concentrations and shifting clouds have not made a compelling hockey-stick graph over the years.

 

A water droplet, rising and falling in the air, rapidly changes state from gas to water to ice to snow to water (and there may be additional states in between). Water oscillates between endothermic and exothermic reactions, drawing in and releasing heat. It is too quick hurtling through space in multiple states, unpredictable, and chaotic for climate scientists to model – predicting tomorrow’s weather is hard enough.

 

Meanwhile, over the forests where cumulus clouds form out of water vapor, there is a drop in atmospheric pressure. Moist air from high-pressure areas flows into the new lows over forests. Plants have developed a biotic pump to gain water in the moist air drawn off the ocean. When a forest is cut, the biotic pump is severed, and moisture stays over the ocean. Gathering moisture over the ocean gives it more energy. Heavier rains and stronger hurricanes will follow. When trees fall in a forest, the ocean has more energy, and storms become more destructive.

 

Our folly is to believe we can fix the climate without addressing what we are doing to the land.

 

Read the complete article in Seven Seas Magazine with images. 

At the ninth biennial New England Ocean Science Education Collaborative (NEOSEC) Ocean Literacy Summit in Gloucester, MA, we launched a campaign calling for a 6,500 square mile Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The proposed sanctuary would feature the sandy shoaly waters where right whales break their winter fast every April, from Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary to Block Island.


We are gathering many diverse voices to call on the government to act because the right whale population has been growing from 350 to 451 whales. Then, in 2017, right whales took a turn for the worse, with the population falling to 338 right whales, with only 50-70 breeding females.


The government will consider a new National Marine Sanctuary only when there is a robust call from many individuals and diverse interest groups.


Join others rescuing right whales by signing our petition and speaking up for the Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

Whale’s Dance Ecosystem Bandana


Beautifully illustrated by artist and yogi Emmy Lopes, with border poem and hand calligraphy by Rhode Island artist/musician Jen Long of the Whale Guitar Project, this bandana explores the delicate harmony between the ocean’s mighty giants, the blue whales, and the tiniest forms of life in the sea, the phytoplankton and copepods.


We’ll thank you for a gift of $35 with the Whale’s Ecosystem Bandana.


Wear your bandana with pride, and thanks for supporting our collaborative efforts to create the Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary to rescue and protect the right whales. 

Publications:


"Fallen Forests and Rising Ocean Fury" Seven Seas Media, February 2024


"How We Created the Hottest Global Average Temperature Day and What To Do About It?" One Green Planet, December 5, 2023



"Commentary: What if there was a Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary?" Gloucester Times, December 1, 2023


"What if there was a Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary?" Seven Seas Media Issue 103 - December 2023


"How We Created the Hottest Global Average Temperature Day and What to do about it." The Eden Magazine, September 2023


"Gasping climate change contrarians." Greenfield Recorder, June 6, 2023


"Saving Forests with Carbon Offset Rewards for Not Cutting, Let Forests Grow Old." E The Environmental Magazine, March 14, 2023


"Slowing Water For Greener Neighborhoods." The Environmental Magazine, December 18, 2022


"Speak for the trees: President Biden should protect public forests." Illuminem, December 18, 2022


"Slowing Water for Greener Neighborhoods." Illuminem, December 9, 2022


"Top Gun at COP27. It's not the plane. It's the pilot." The Environmental Magazine, November 29, 2022


"Biden’s game-changing administrative actions for climate at COP27." illuminem Voices, November 19, 2022


"Taking action to improve plight of right whales." Boston Herald, November 9, 2022


"Revival Coffee in Somerville takes up the Natural Lawn Challenge." The Somerville Times, August 27, 2022


"For eco groups, less lawn fertilizer is key to water crisis." By Dustin Luca, Salem News August 12, 2022


More carbon capture, better water retention and greener emerald bracelets for Dedham.” The Dedham Times, August 12, 2022.


“Emerald Bracelets to Solve Three Of The World’s Greatest Environmental Problems.” by Rob Moir, The Environmental Magazine, June 21, 2022


"Of Mousy and Elephantine Cycles, Managing the CLIMATE CRISIS after Glasgow COP26." The Eden, March 2022



“Lincoln resident promotes natural lawn care,” Concord Journal, Aug 3, 2021


Zumi’s host Natural Lawn Care for Healthy Soils Challenge,Ipswich Chronicle Transcript, Aug 10, 2021


Peabody peak capacity generator need not burn fossil fuels,” The Salem News, Aug 5, 2021 


30% preserved or restored by 2030,” The Salem News, Sep 29, 2021


Pogie deaths, a Mystic River mystery,” Boston Herald, Oct 4, 2021


Remember the right whales with a special day,” CommonWealth, Oct 29, 2021


Retreating Arctic Sea Ice, Sea Ice Formation, and the Stronger Flow of the Gulf Stream” Seven Seas November 2021


"Rob Moir, PhD, Science Advocate," Bloomberg Business, April 11, 2022

Choose from 6 Campaigns on ORI Website
DONATE
Facebook        Twitter        Instagram        

For healthy oceans, green watersheds, and diverse abundant wildlife.