Ahh.....the Gulf Stream is here to stay....

Another environmental 'scare' is now over....

The Gulf Stream, that almost mythical flow of warm seas that makes Norway and a few other Nordic countries liveable, isn't about to disappear any time soon. New research contradicts earlier theories that it might.

Climate researchers have re-examined studies that indicated the Gulf Stream was weakening. It's long been a source of warmer seas flowing north through the Atlantic, and it also sends colder waters south.

The Gulf Stream flows roughly from the east coast of South America, around the Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic, where it heads north, east of Ireland, over towards Norway and around Iceland, before heading due south again.

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) reports that several observations in recent years suggested the circulation of the Gulf Stream had weakened, possibly because of global warming. Studies, the institute noted, had suggested that the flow of cold water south was down by half.

A group of researchers from Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Germany and Norway thus started paying closer attention to the Gulf Stream, and now they're releasing conclusions that can leave climate researchers breathing a sigh of relief.

"It hasn't only been possible to show that the currents instead have maintained a surprisingly constant strength during the last 50 years, but we can also point out where earlier signs of weakness were misleading," said Steffen M Olsen of DMI.