Gavin Schmidt, recently a co-author of this piece for openDemocracy, doubts the more alarming stories that have made the press. Here's part of his analysis from RealClimate.org:

while the changes being seen are indeed significant given the accuracy of modern oceanography, the magnitude of the changes (a few hundredths of a salinity unit) are very much smaller (maybe two orders of magnitude) than the kinds of changes inferred from the paleo data or seen in climate models. Thus while continued monitoring of this key climatic area is clearly warranted, the imminent chilling of the Europe is a ways off yet. (full text here)

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