If you're an anglophile, a lover of all things British, then this time of year must be like Christmas for you. Well, it's real Christmastime as well, but you know what I mean, right? If you have a soft spot for Dickensian carolers, candlelit mince pies, snow-covered country villages, special episodes of inexplicably popular TV shows like Downton Abbey and Doctor Who... well, in December, we all become a tiny bit British, don't we? But not everything we think we know about life across the pond is strictly "pukka." We've enlisted Sir Kenneth Jennings, VC, GBE, DJO (Distinguished Jeopardy! Order) to help us "mind the gap" between fact and fiction when it comes to Merrie Old England.
The Debunker: Does the Gulf Stream Keep Britain Warm?
Travel due west from the United Kingdom, and what's the first U.S. state you'd hit? Virginia? Massachusetts? Maine, maybe? A quick look at a world map will probably surprise many: the whole of the British Isles lies to the north of the northernmost point in the contiguous 48 states. Due west from London, you'd reach the New World at the subarctic forest of southern Labrador, Canada. The only state you could hit traveling west from anywhere in the U.K. is actually Alaska! In short, Britain is a lot farther north than a lot of people think.
So why doesn't the United Kingdom have the same climate as subarctic Canada? Britain is famous for its thick fogs and gloomy winters, but they're not brutal Game of Thrones winters, they're just dark and rainy. Most of the year is quite pleasant. "Oh, to be in England now that April's there," as Browning once wrote. The surprising mildness of Europe's climate is usually ascribed to the Gulf Stream, a powerful Atlantic current that carries warm water from the Florida coast northeast toward Europe. This has been scientific consensus - common knowledge, even - ever since Matthew Fontaine Maury, superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory, first studied the Gulf Stream in the 1850s.
But in the last couple years, Commander Maury has been debunked. Three different climate studies have concluded that the Gulf Stream, though it exists, does very little to moderate British climate. According to scientists at Columbia, the warming can be explained by two other factors: the North Atlantic releasing heat it absorbed during the summer, and warm air currents traveling northward from the Equator. The only place in the world where ocean currents actually moderate climate, according to these new computer models, is the coast of Norway. This should come as a relief to British folks who regularly hear media panic about climate change potentially altering the Gulf Stream and bringing Canadian-style winters to Britain. Global warming is trouble, don't get me wrong, but a new Ice Age in Islington is unlikely to be one of the results.
Quick Quiz: Gulfstream, an American corporation now owned by General Dynamics, is one of the world's leading producers of what?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.