Atlantic’s Gulf Stream has huge influence on atmosphere

PARIS (AFP) – The conveyor belt of Atlantic warm water known as the Gulf Stream massively influences the lower layers of the atmosphere, a finding that could shed light on a poorly-understood aspect of global warming, scientists report.

The Gulf Stream flows from the western tropical Atlantic to the northeast, bathing coastal western Europe with warmth.


Without it, cities such as Paris and London would experience winters as fierce as in Quebec, Canada.

Japanese researchers, publishing on Thursday in the British weekly journal Nature, used data from a satellite called QuikSCAT to get images of wind and precipitation in the troposphere above the the Gulf Stream.

The troposphere, extending between eight and 16 kilometres (five to 10 miles) above the Earth’s surface, is the lowest and densest part of Earth’s atmosphere and also accounts for almost all of its water vapour and rainfall.

The images show that the Gulf Stream “affects the entire troposphere” above it, according to the new paper, headed by Shoshiro Minobe of Hokkaido University.

AFP