"Blue Blob", a patch of cooling water in the North Atlantic Ocean is making headlines in the past few days. The reason is that scientists and researchers have theorized that Blue Blob has slowed the melting of the glaciers in the region since 2011.
The Arctic region was getting warmer four times than the global average. So much so that Iceland's glaciers in the region lost 11 billion tons of ice per year between 1995 to 2010. Since 2011, the loss of ice has gone down to five billion tons a year. More than half of the previous rate. But the same was not seen in other nearby glaciers, especially in Svalbard and Greenland.
Blue Blob reached its peak in 2014-15 when the sea surface temperature was 1.4 degrees Celsius lower than normal. The reason behind the cooler water was the presence of lower air temperatures over Iceland's glaciers.
Meanwhile, other scientists have put forward the reason that the Blob is a part of the normal sea surface temperature variability. Another reason that they give is the cold winters in 2014 and 2015 that led to cooler oceans.
Blue Blob is not the first cooling trend observed in the region. Atlantic Warming Hole had reduced the sea surface temperatures by about 0.4-0.8 degrees Celsius in the twentieth century. It may continue to do so even in the future as well.
The loss of glaciers is one of the biggest concerns for scientists and climate change activists worldwide. In the last two decades, only the rate of loss has doubled (267 gigatonnes of ie per year between 2000-2019). The biggest impact of the melting of glaciers would be in the coastal regions where the rising sea level would reduce the landmass available for human use.
Read More -
Comments