European ice age

There are still a few people in northern Europe who think that global warming might not be such a bad thing. In Britain, where summer can sometimes seem to last little more than a few weeks, many would welcome the idea of it getting a bit hotter. Unfortunately things are not so simple. Global warming doesn't just mean that the world will slowly get warmer. Paradoxically, it could cause certain areas to get colder - a lot colder. The latest predictions are that northern Europe could even be plunged into an ice age. While areas of south-eastern Europe, such as Greece, would continue to get hotter and drier, Britain could find itself, in the winter months at least, surrounded by sea ice. Due to rising emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, the ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate. But how could the melting of the Greenland ice sheet threaten to plunge northern Europe into a new ice age? The link in the chain of events is what some call the Gulf Stream and others call the Atlantic Conveyor. This is the stream of warm water that comes up from Central America and flows across the Atlantic to northern Europe. It is this huge mass of warm water which accounts for the relatively high temperatures enjoyed by Britain, for instance, compared with parts of Canada and Russia which are equally far north of the equator. Warm water is conveyed across to Europe near the surface of the Atlantic, and at its northernmost point it cools and sinks because the water from the tropics has a higher salt content, making it denser and so heavier than the water near the arctic.