fascinating - impossible to clip. visit source for full article. not very long and certainly a worth-while read!

Been trying to remember name of this for ages, so thanks. One of the factors involved in global climate change.

I had a problem with this sentence:
"The poles might get much colder and the equatorial regions even warmer than they are today. "
If the poles get colder, the flow should increase as the waters are cooled. This seems to me to be a self-regulating mechanism. If the passageway were blocked stopping the flow, the polar waters would get colder.

wow...just wow...a real treasure of a clip! thanks Mona

This seems to me to be a self-regulating mechanism.

It is, largely, a self-regulating feedback system. But certain events can interrupt the system. I have been trying to find anything even remotely approachable about the subject to link here... Here are some attempts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html

http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/xrkntr8gbnajmfqe/

2,000,000 m3 of water per second

Also known as 2 Sverdrups

A wonderful and thoughtful response! None of the proposed mechanisms of the THC can make higher ocean temperatures per se the cause of the conveyor failure. The only consistent cause is an large influx of freshwater.

http://wikyonos.seos.uvic.ca/people/weaver/documents/NatureNV2.html

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/%7Estefan/Lectures/erca.html#HEADING11-30

among others. And the forecasts of global doom from a failure are somewhat exaggerated except from a Eurocentric view. There is no equivalent in either the southern hemisphere or the Pacific Ocean.

Thanks for this valuable clip, mona!