Understanding Global Warming: Tracking the Salt Oscillator

The worldwide ocean Conveyor has frequently been identified as the reason for the end of ice ages. Several publications have postulated the Conveyor as a driver for Sahel rain fall, SOI/ENSO, El Ninos, North Atlantic SST, Azores High Pressure, Atlantic Trade Wind, Atlantic major hurricane activity, and global surface temperature changes.

Previous authors have postulated that the highly saline Mediterranean outflow is a driver for the Conveyor. Dr. Gray (Colorado State University) posits that a stronger "salt oscillator" that drives the Conveyor is "somewhere in the Indian Ocean". Herein evidence is presented that the Red Sea, with a salt-concentration factor five times higher than the Mediterranean, could be a likely source for the salt-oscillator.

El-Nino-severity and interval plots indicate that the two most severe climate periods in the last 2,000 years were immediately preceded by openings of the Suez Canal (in 1869 and 700 AD). In addition, each major global warming for the last 7,000 years has been preceded by a canal linking the European Mediterranean with the Red Sea (the Pharoahs of Egypt dug such canals several times).

(This poster session is based upon my paper, "How Fast is the Conveyor?", presented at the 11th International Global Warming Conference in Boston in April 2000, and published in World Resource Review, a refereed journal).