Hopefully you haven't fallen asleep yet, if so WAKE UP!!

Anyway, I find this interesting:

Research suggests that ocean circulation plays less of a role in climate change than previously thought

New research shows that the Gulf Stream has little effect on the contrast in winter temperatures between Europe and eastern North America, dispelling a long-held assumption. Instead, atmospheric circulation, augmented by the Rocky Mountains, plays a larger role, say Dr. Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Dr. David Battisti of the University of Washington, and their colleagues.

Published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, this new data suggests that atmospheric circulation is more important to understanding climate variability than is the ocean circulation.

What Seager, Battisti, and their co-workers found was that much of the difference in temperature between eastern North America and western Europe can be explained by the simple and well-known fact that the ocean stores heat in the summer and gradually releases it in winter. Where winds blow from west to east, as across the North Atlantic, the heat released in winter preferentially warms the land areas to the east of the ocean. That this is a big effect is well known, but the new research shows that the winter temperature contrast is much bigger than can be accounted for by this simple difference between a warm 'maritime' climate in Europe and a frigid 'continental' climate in North America.

read on here