So, my faithful 10 readers know that our oceans are the main engine that has kept life alive for a couple of billion years. Same mechanism, but plate tectonics keeps screwing it up. If this mechanism is 1000 times more energetic than other things (say no more), then the 10 people who follow physics would make a brutal conclusion. Thank goodness we have social physics!
So, we know that we are going into the cold side of a full 40 year temperature wave. Although El Nino is noted for 7 year cycles, the real EN cycle is 20 years of lovely heat, and warm lake water at the cottage.
So, the North Pacific Current retreats, cooling the Arctic ocean and busting the Beaufort Gyre. This sends a torrent of cold water over the North Pole and coming crashing down on the Gulf Stream. Poor old Eurotown!
A mini ice age is part of a full 600 year cycle. 300 warm and 300 cold. Each one of these could launch an ice advance. This cycle is caused by the equatorial ocean currents moving down a notch. Lucky for us we have isostatic rebound, which forces a 10,000 year cycle on ice advances.
If the land rebounds high enough, a deep mini ice age can leave snow all year round. This is a true feedback cycle, since permanent snow is a big temperature downer. And lucky for us, the oscillation has a counter force of sinking the land.
But what happens to the Southern Hemisphere during our cold cycles? We have no geological history for the last few million years. Lots of geology up north, with all the ice ages. But a hint has come to me with the latest Cape Town drought. I checked up temperature and rain since the 60's. Cape Town has the same temp, but zooms up in rain, during the 70's and 80's. So, an ice advance in the north, would sogify the south. That's a lot of heat energy eventually radiating from Antarctica. Probably tons of ice build-up.
ps. not infra-red radiation from the Deep South, but convection. Sorry.
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