"The trend could cause a little ice age by subverting the northern penetration of Gulf Stream waters. Normally, the Gulf Stream, laden with heat soaked up in the tropics, meanders up the east coasts of the United States and Canada. As it flows northward, the stream surrenders heat to the air. Because the prevailing North Atlantic winds blow eastward, a lot of the heat wafts to Europe. That’s why many scientists believe winter temperatures on the Continent are as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those in North America at the same latitude."
A duo of an American and a European scientist proved last year that this theory about the Gulf Stream being the engine of warmer North Atlantic balmy weather in winter on the western edge of the north Atlantic was, all along, an assumption that no one had verified with any data.
They gathered the data and verified the theory was wrong. The Gulf Stream affect is too small to affect any major trend, or produce a trend, it can only moderate an existing trend. The major reason the western side of the Atlantic, at high north latitudes, has such balmy winter weather so often is the same reason the western side of the Pacific at high northern latitudes (northern California Oregon and Washington) have the same kind of weather in winter.
That cause comes from how, in similar fashion, the mid-continent mountain ranges (like the Rockies in the US and Canada and the Urals in Europe) affect the jet stream which, in the northern latitudes is the major distribution belt for the climate as it moves the largest masses of air from west to east.
The mid-continent disruption of the Urals, alters the jet stream in Europe to deliver a warmer primary air-flow received at the northern Pacific at the western edge of the U.S., while in the same way, the Rocky Mountains produce similar weather affects for the northern Atlantic at the western edge of Europe. The temperatures and volumes were tracked and compared over time and demonstrated to be the primary engine of "climate delivery" in those areas, and only marginally affected by the air-exchange factors from the Gulf Stream. (by the way, in the northern Atlantic, the largest volume of the Gulf Stream does not flow at or near the surface, but at very low depths at which it is has less ocean to air exchange, anyway).
The oceanic Gulf Stream affect is too small to affect any major trend, or produce a trend, it can only moderate an existing trend in the northern Atlantic. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere and the mid-continent disruption of it is the primary cause of delivering the primary mass of either "warmer" or "cooler" air to the western edges of the two main continents in the northern hemisphere.
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