Vital Climate Graphics : Potential Impacts of Climate Change
Next: Potential impact of sea-level rise on Bangladesh

30. The global conveyor belt thermohaline circulation is driven primarily by the formation and sinking of deep water (from around 1500m to the Antarctic bottom water overlying the bottom of the ocean) in the Norwegian Sea. This circulation is thought to be responsible for the large flow of upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Archipelogo. The two counteracting forcings operating in the North Atlantic control the conveyor belt circulation: (1) the thermal forcing (high-latitude cooling and the low-latitude heating) which drives a polar southward flow; and (2) haline forcing (net high-latitude freshwater gain and low-latitude evaporation) which moves in the opposite direction. In today's Atlantic the thermal forcing dominates, hence, the flow of upper current from south to north.

When the strength of the haline forcing increases due to excess precipitation, runoff, or ice melt the conveyor belt will weaken or even shut down. The variability in the strength of the conveyor belt will lead to climate change in Europe and it could also influence in other areas of the global ocean. The North Atlantic atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system appears to have natural cycles of many timescales in switching the conveyor belt. Periodic movement of excessive ice from the Arctic into the Greenland Sea appears to be responsible for the interdecadal variability of the conveyor belt. There is no evidence yet that the influx of interdecadal switching extends beyond the North Atlantic Ocean. .