Partyguy, you are very strange, that comment is really odd. Being a disruptive norty boy again?! Northern England and the Eastern Seaboard of the US are warmer than Russia and internal Canada because the north atlantic drift sucks warm water from the Caribean. It shuts down if too much fresh water from melting glaciers stops the process, this has happened before, and both places could see temperatures plunging maybe 5 degrees. When the cycle ends, the poles get a bit warmer from higher absorbtion of sun from more sea water, the bit inbetween the poles and the tropics gets a bit colder when less heat flows up from the tropics, and the tropics heat up to the point where coral reefs and rainforests cannot survive, because the mechanism for transfering heat from the tropics to the sub-tropics and temperate areas shuts down. Read "Heat" by George Monbiot.

The weather in Europe this year has been what one would expect from a weaker north atlantic drift, the artic jet streams that are usually over the nordic countries has strayed far south and covered the UK. Story is, that a few hurricanes should shift it north, but, if a weak north atlantic drift is stopping hurricanes from transferring heat north, then that won't happen. Scary stuff if I'm right, but I'm not a metreologist, so, I may be totally wrong!!

"Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there." (Aldous Huxley "Island" 1962, p38)

The Thermohaline Circulation (THC) is not primarily wind driven. You are wrong, again. The temperature differential coupled with the salinity differential (and the resulting differences in density) are the major driving factor in the Thermohaline Circulation. So how does it work? Northern latitude cooling of highly saline ocean water is the main driver. As that water cools and achieves significant density differences, it sinks which pulls more southerly water north to be cooled yet again.

The arctic ice melt is of interest because while it is not lowering the salinity, it is in an area of the world that contains large amounts of non-oceanic ice (Greenland, Canada, and Siberia) which if melted would inject a large volume of fresh water into the arctic region. Exactly what effect this would have on the THC is not well understood at this time but it is believed that certain northern regions which have experienced balmy weather might not continue to do so.

Finally, no one has suggested that the arctic will become as warm as the tropics. That comment was a deliberate strawman, which is common from you. In fact, I cannot recall a single comment from you that ever contained anything other than smartass remarks intended to incite flame wars. You might eventually try contributing something useful to the discussion instead of trying to be a troll.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone