Back in 2004, NASA sounded the alarm. Recent satellite measurements showed that the great conveyor belt of the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream, had weakened by as much as 30 percent over the previous 12 years—presumably due to global warming. The implications of such a decline, according to NASA, would be catastrophic for northern Europe, as warm waters would no longer feed tropical heat to the area and sustain the temperate climate. In short, it suggested London could be heading for an ice age.
But it appears there's no need to break out the mittens and galoshes just yet. A more recent study published in Science concluded that the Gulf Stream was merely undergoing a cyclical adjustment, and that the full effects of climate change on the behaviors of ocean currents are still too complex to predict.
Today's map was crafted by Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger sometime around 1786, and it's credited with being one of the earliest charts of the complete Gulf Stream system. Now in the collection of the Library of Congress, the map contains some great notes by Franklin:
The earliest known record of the current was in a log book kept by Ponce De Leon in 1513. The log noted: "A current such that, although they had great wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward and it seems that they were proceeding well; at the end it was known that the current was more powerful than the wind."
You can explore the Gulf Stream yourself via real-time data collected from buoys stationed in the Atlantic by NOAA. It can tell you the precise temperature of various points of the ocean, as well as wind speed and wave height. Ben and Ponce would have a field day with it.
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