Faster winds and faster currents

[noblewarrior]

From my recollection of ocean studies, a wind induced current will attain aproximately 2-3% of the sustained wind. Therefore if the winds are increasisng the current will also. Though it should be noted that the direction of the current will be deflected from the wind direction due to the effect of vorticity and Ekman transport.

[peter57]

Originally Posted by roland stockham

Discovery 15797;3094369 - There are a few key things here...

"...monitored over several years" - NOT several millennia. For example, I don't recall reading any "global hysteria" stating that several thousand years ago the earth's sea levels were much higher than they are today.


Monitored over several years means taking the same readings at the sae places the using running averages to come up with statistically significant figures for the current rate of change.


"...not due to 'normal' cyclic varyations [sic]" - what we consider normal variations are a snapshot from a very very brief period of earth history.



I agree. Mans history on earth is, geologically speaking, brief and recent. We have direct recordings going back maybe 5000yrs (China, middle east and India) from observations of earlier civilizations. Archeological evidence of, for example the Iron Age mini glaciation go back further but after that we can still get accurate climate data from things like ice cores and rock sample. I suggest that we have a good understanding of climate variations from the Pliocene to present.
'Normal, variation does not mean the last hundred years but included things like the variation in the suns output, glaciation etc.


The earth is an amazing planet that is alive and in constant flux.
Absolutely and the concern is not that the earth will not survive. It has survived much greater changes and life remains. The concern is that the rate of change will be very challenging for all species. We are already in to the 5 mass extinction phase and unless we plan to follow the dinosaurs we need to slow the change to something mammals can adapt to. Rates of change in the geological record such as the onset of glacial periods are orders of magnitude slower. As an example the rise of sea level you refer to happened over a few thousand years not 50-100

If C02 is climate driver and the climate has been cyclic over the last 4000 years with temperatures higher than today but C02 was a constant 280 ppm, why didn't fluctuate more than 20 ppm? Because it has a very low ECS- Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.