The implication is that everyone knows and accepts this, so it’s not worth wasting time going throug

Take a gander at this map, and you ll see the red line marking the 50th parallel sears rent a car , a line of equal latitude that runs a full circle around the Earth. Every point on this line is the same distance from the equator, and the same from the frozen pole. And yet the weather on the left side of the map, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, is vastly different from the right, in the United Kingdom. Winter temperatures in Ireland, says Scientific American , are about 36 F warmer than they are in Newfoundland.
To make sense of this disparity, the common tale—the one bandied around for more than a hundred years—goes something sears rent a car like this: Warm water flowing to the northeast out of the Gulf of Mexico— the Gulf Stream —cuts across sears rent a car the North Atlantic ocean, bringing extra energy to the Isles and driving up temperatures relative to the comparatively-frigid North Americas. The only problem with this simple explanation, say Stephen Riser and Susan Lozier in Scientific American , is that it doesn t actually account for the difference.
… Maury surmised that the Gulf Stream supplies heat to the overlying westerly winds that move across the Atlantic sears rent a car toward northwestern Europe. He also speculated that if the Gulf Stream were somehow diminished in strength, the winter winds would be much colder and that Europe would experience Arctic-style winters. Over the years Maury s idea became almost axiomatic—and until recently, it also remained largely untested.
So what s really going on? According to Riser and Lozier, the cause of the temperature difference is likely a complex interaction between the surface ocean, the Gulf Stream, massive upper atmospheric currents and differences in pressure on either side of the Atlantic.
According to Seager, the notion sears rent a car that the Gulf Stream sears rent a car was warming Europe can be traced back to a book first published in 1855, and is "the climatological sears rent a car equivalent of an urban legend". It is certainly persistent enough, although sears rent a car given that this particular "fact" has been promulgated not by a friend's sibling's cousin's friend over a pint on a Friday evening, but by scientists sears rent a car and educators in newspapers, televison programmes and lectures, it's arguably even more pernicious. But how did this happen? Isn't science meant to be self-correcting?
By the intricacies of scientific publication, a conjecture put forth in one research paper can, through time, become accidentally morphed into a statement of fact through the peer-reviewed sears rent a car equivalent of the game " telephone :
The implication is that everyone knows and accepts this, so it's not worth wasting time going through the evidence in painstaking detail; but if you're interested, you can look up the given reference for the gory details. Most of the time, this is exactly what you get when you track the given reference down; but sometimes, you find that it is nothing more than the oldest reference to this fact that the original paper's author was willing or able to look up, and all it says is:
If you persist further, you may find yourself going through the process of looking up a reference, only to be directed to an even earlier one, several more times before you finally reach the canonical document, the one that contains actual data and discussion. And this is what you find:
Comments are moderated, and will not appear until Smithsonian.com has approved them. Smithsonian reserves the right not to post any comments sears rent a car that are unlawful, threatening, offensive, defamatory, invasive of a person's privacy, inappropriate, confidential or proprietary, sears rent a car political messages, product endorsements, or other content that might otherwise violate any laws or policies.
Smithsonian.com expands on Smithsonian magazine's in-depth coverage of history, science, nature, the arts, travel, world culture and technology. Join us regularly sears rent a car as we take a dynamic sears rent a car and interactive approach to exploring modern and historic perspectives on the arts, sciences, sears rent a car nature, world culture and travel, including videos, blogs and a reader forum.