What do heat waves and ice ages have in common?
Brussels, 03 Mar 2004 This is not a joke. Europe appears to be getting hotter but – instead of raising fears of rising mercury – a trans-Atlantic research team will spend the next four years studying ocean currents to test the opposite hypothesis. British scientists set sail earlier this month to begin work measuring changes to Europe’s central heating system, the currents circulating in the Atlantic. Their work, onboard the Royal Research Ship ‘Discovery’, will test whether recent climatic events – such as Europe’s ‘big heat’ last summer – could mark the beginning stages of the next ice age. It sounds dramatic but past disruptions to the system of currents have coincided with rapid climatic transitions in and out of ice ages, explains Dr Stuart Cunningham of the Southampton Oceanography Centre (UK), which will carry out the research together with scientists from the University of Miami (US). The ship is equipped with sensitive oceanographic instruments which – deployed between the Can
