The probability of rapid climate change

If you look at a map of the air temperature of the surface of the Earth, you will see that North West Europe, including the UK, is warmer than Alaska, which is at the same latitude but on the Pacific rather than Atlantic Ocean. At school you were probably told that this was because of the Gulf Stream. However, there is a very similar current in the Pacific—the Kuroshio—which takes warm water north past Japan and then out into the Atlantic. Peter Challenor asks: What is the unique feature of the Atlantic that keeps us warm and could it change in the next few years?