On the brink: Atlantic Ocean current is getting closer to collapse

[midian182]

Forward-looking: The collapsing of the Atlantic currents – an event fictionalized in the movie The Day After Tomorrow – could be a lot closer to happening than feared. A new study using complex computer simulations has found that the world is heading for a tipping point, which will be "bad news for the climate system and humanity."

Scientists have used computer models and previous data to develop an early warning indicator for the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc).

Amoc, which includes the Gulf Stream, is a system of surface-level and deep currents in the Atlantic Ocean characterized by a northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic, and a southward flow of colder, deep waters. The currents, which carry heat, carbon, and nutrients, play vital roles in regulating the climate system.

But the nightmare prospect of Amoc collapsing is looming larger than ever. Previous research showed that the system is in its weakest state in more than a millennium, having declined 15% since 1950. The fears have been intensified by Greenland's glaciers and Arctic ice sheets melting faster than expected due to global warming, adding freshwater to the sea and obstructing the warm, salty water from the South from sinking, explains The Guardian.

This scenario made up the plot of 2004's The Day After Tomorrow, though the reality wouldn't see people being instantly frozen on the spot or ice chasing humans down corridors. But the consequences of Amoc collapsing would still be very, very bad.

It wouldn't be this bad

Temperatures in northwestern Europe would rise by 9 to 27 degrees (5 to 15 degrees Celsius) over the decades, Artic ice would extend further south, and the Southern Hemisphere could get even hotter.

The new paper on the early warning signs of Amoc's tipping point, published in Science Advances, notes that the collapse would also cause sea levels in the Atlantic to rise by a meter (3.2 feet) in some regions. Wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would reverse, and there would be more erratic changes in global temperatures and weather conditions. All of which could lead to food and water shortages, among other issues.

"We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we're not sure how much closer," said study lead author Rene van Westen, a climate scientist and oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We are heading towards a tipping point."

"What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs," van Westen added. "It will be devastating."

"This is bad news for the climate system and humanity as up till now one could think that Amoc tipping was only a theoretical concept and tipping would disappear as soon as the full climate system, with all its additional feedbacks, was considered," the paper said.

The big question is when the collapse will happen. Unfortunately, van Westen says there still isn't enough data to say when that might be. He said it's likely a century away, but it could still happen within the 30-year-old's lifetime.

Masthead: Diego Delso

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101863-brink-atlantic-current-collapse-could-happen-sooner-than.html

 

[FaTaL]

Previous research showed that the system is in its weakest state in more than a millennium, having declined 15% since 1950

Millennium = 1,000 years. 2023-1950 = 73 years

Another liberal article. I'm not arguing against the metadata , but do NOT dramatize the facts. There is no empirical way to validate what the atlantic current was in the last 1,000 years. Yes, we can speculate based on other data, but we weren't monitoring the ocean 1,000 years ago... and you cannot rely on documented text, as history was written by humans, who tend to lie and/or embellish the truth...

 

[mbk34]

It's always amazed me that Americans in general (a sweeping overstatement I know) seem to disbelieve climate change or perhaps it's just the consequences of climate change. I wonder if it's just poor education? a lack of imagination? or perhaps the US actually does live in a climate bubble separate to the rest of the world. I remember reading a book called "6 degrees" which detailed the changes in half degree (C) increments as the world warmed up. We're at 1.5 degrees now and the changes it forecast have already happened. It only went to 6 degrees as human society as we know it wouldn't get past this point. When the book was written it was thought it would take 25 years to get to 1 degree hotter, it actually only took 8 years. I call that fairly dramatic.

 

[m4a4]

It's always amazed me that Americans in general (a sweeping overstatement I know) seem to disbelieve climate change or perhaps it's just the consequences of climate change. I wonder if it's just poor education? a lack of imagination? or perhaps the US actually does live in a climate bubble separate to the rest of the world. I remember reading a book called "6 degrees" which detailed the changes in half degree (C) increments as the world warmed up. We're at 1.5 degrees now and the changes it forecast have already happened. It only went to 6 degrees as human society as we know it wouldn't get past this point. When the book was written it was thought it would take 25 years to get to 1 degree hotter, it actually only took 8 years. I call that fairly dramatic.

How about boy who cried wolf?
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-y...c-predictions-the-so-called-experts-are-0-50/

And then there are no consequences for these bad predictions. Besides for us normal, everyday people (with carbon taxes, and expensive green energy tax spending, and knee-jerk green energy policies, and...)

 

[wiyosaya]

How about boy who cried wolf?

How about actually reading the science behind this paper? https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060415

 

[mbk34]

And then there are no consequences for these bad predictions. Besides for us normal, everyday people (with carbon taxes, and expensive green energy tax spending, and knee-jerk green energy policies, and...)

I think it's a little unfair to pick one bad forecast and then say that all climate change predications are false. I live in London, a year or so ago the temp hit 40C (104F) and stayed around there for days. I've never known it to be so hot and previously 30C was exceptional. I also have a home high up in the Alps and the temp there is getting excessive too - it should be winter now but the weather feels like spring. I watch the glaciers retreat every year from my balcony (roughly 40 meters a year). Even the "permafrost" that holds the mountains together is now melting and large rocks are falling down closing climbing roots. These rocks were previously stable for 1000's of years. I appreciate that green policies aren't the cheapest but the alternative is frightening.

 

[m4a4]

I think it's a little unfair to pick one bad forecast and then say that all climate change predications are false. I live in London, a year or so ago the temp hit 40C (104F) and stayed around there for days. I've never known it to be so hot and previously 30C was exceptional. I also have a home high up in the Alps and the temp there is getting excessive too - it should be winter now but the weather feels like spring. I watch the glaciers retreat every year from my balcony (roughly 40 meters a year). Even the "permafrost" that holds the mountains together is now melting and large rocks are falling down closing climbing roots. These rocks were previously stable for 1000's of years. I appreciate that green policies aren't the cheapest but the alternative is frightening.

One bad forecast? Did you even look at the link?

PS. it wasn't even that long ago that the scare was that we're heading into an ice age. Then it was Global Warming™, and now it's Climate Change (a more convenient blanket term). And everywhere the fearmongering goes (with incomplete, shallow, or frankly misleading data), conveniently people in power get richer with the classic "throw money at this before it's too late to think about it!" tactic.

 

[Benses]

One bad forecast? Did you even look at the link?

PS. it wasn't even that long ago that the scare was that we're heading into an ice age. Then it was Global Warming™, and now it's Climate Change (a more convenient blanket term). And everywhere the fearmongering goes (with incomplete, shallow, or frankly misleading data), conveniently people in power get richer with the classic "throw money at this before it's too late to think about it!" tactic.

Prime example of the problems in todays world. They seem to think they are expect in everything but our in fact expert in nothing.

 

[OortCloud]

Another liberal article.

Only in America could an article on climate be immediately blasted as 'liberal propaganda' and even more hilarious is talking as if 'being liberal' is a bad thing. The window-lickers really are taking over the asylum. Have you burnt any books today Cleetus?

 

[mbk34]

One bad forecast? Did you even look at the link?

I did but only clicked on a few of the 50 links to get a general feel for the quality of the report. The one about the ice age coming by 2020 was by a single scientist, climate change is something all independent scientists agree with. There was another on the Maldives being underwater by 2018 but stating that this hasn't happened - it doesn't mention that the capital is now surrounded by a sea wall to keep the sea out, that they're doing land reclamation to raise the height of islands and that one of the islands (Tuvalu) has just signed an agreement with Australia to resettle it's people there. There was one on killer bees - I guess they were popular in films but I believe they are now present in some parts of the southern USA and Brazil, here in the UK we're currently fighting against an influx of Asian Hornets which are almost as bad. There were also 3 articles on peak oil with different dates - really it's still just a question of getting the date correct and most forecasts still suggest it's soon. I stopped reading then.

 

[passingposeidon]

Scary stuff, and I don't doubt it will happen. After reading 'The Tragedy of the Commons', it's quite clear that there is essentially no way back. Climate disaster is an inevitability. The only question is will we be able to adapt to it, and what will that look like. We are intelligent, resourceful and highly capable at finding solutions. But we can't win against nature, just try to survive.

 

[wiyosaya]

One bad forecast? Did you even look at the link?

PS. it wasn't even that long ago that the scare was that we're heading into an ice age. Then it was Global Warming™, and now it's Climate Change (a more convenient blanket term). And everywhere the fearmongering goes (with incomplete, shallow, or frankly misleading data), conveniently people in power get richer with the classic "throw money at this before it's too late to think about it!" tactic.

Remember when the villagers stopped listening to the Boy Who Cried Wolf? That fable goes both ways.

 

[m4a4]

Remember when the villagers stopped listening to the Boy Who Cried Wolf? That fable goes both ways.

Yeah. It's a bad thing to cry wolf. I thought that was obvious

 

[ZackL04]

I think it's a little unfair to pick one bad forecast and then say that all climate change predications are false. I live in London, a year or so ago the temp hit 40C (104F) and stayed around there for days. I've never known it to be so hot and previously 30C was exceptional. I also have a home high up in the Alps and the temp there is getting excessive too - it should be winter now but the weather feels like spring. I watch the glaciers retreat every year from my balcony (roughly 40 meters a year). Even the "permafrost" that holds the mountains together is now melting and large rocks are falling down closing climbing roots. These rocks were previously stable for 1000's of years. I appreciate that green policies aren't the cheapest but the alternative is frightening.

Arent we getting sucked into the sun too?

 

[jwdR311]

I'll worry when the elites stop buying up all the beachfront property.

 

[Endymio]

This theory used to be called the Thermohaline Circulation Shutdown Catastrophe: the early-1990s prediction that it would collapse within 20 years was invalidated by real-world data almost as soon as the prediction was made -- yet that didn't stop Hollywood -- and Al Gore -- from trying to scare people with it. Now they're renamed it to try to recycle it.

I'll also note that Dr. James Hansen, the so-called "Father of Global Warming" -- predicted in the late 1980s that, within 20 to 40 years, most of NYC would be underwater, and the parts that weren't would be swept by continual gale-force winds.

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, food production per capita is the highest it's been in human history and deaths from natural disasters at the lowest in human history. The ocean is rising -- but rising much slower than it was 15,000 years ago. CO2 levels today are 400 ppm -- far less than the 8,000 ppm they were during the early Carboniferous Period, one of the richest and most biologically diverse periods ever in earth's history.

The sky isn't falling, Chicken Little.

 

[mbk34]

Arent we getting sucked into the sun too?

That will happen in about 5 billion years so I think we can ignore that. The changes that are happening everywhere around the world (with the exception of America) are happening now and very likely to lead to the deaths of any offspring you have in about 100 years.

The hottest years on record were 2016, 2020, 2019, 2015, 2017, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2014, and 2010. Records began in 1850. This January was also the hottest January ever. Perhaps you can see a trend?

I'll worry when the elites stop buying up all the beachfront property.

Unfortunately, the elites might not be any brighter than you.

 

[Endymio]

The hottest years on record were 2016, 2020, 2019, 2015, 2017, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2014, and 2010.

Only since 1850. And only once you run the data through a million-line code database that heavily massages it. Until enough adjustments were made to the raw data, the 1930s Dust-bowl years were the warmest since 1850. Since 2010, researchers have miraculously found numerous reasons to downward-adjust those readings. It's called "confirmation bias" in psychological terms.

With current technology, mankind lives comfortably in temperatures ranging from below zero to 100F. The average temperature of the globe today is roughly 57F ... substantially cooler than the 72F that man -- and most of the plants and animals we depend upon -- prefer. An additional rise of 1.5 degrees will have mostly positive effects. It certainly doesn't mean "millions will die".

 

[Kam7r]

It's always amazed me that Americans in general (a sweeping overstatement I know) seem to disbelieve climate change or perhaps it's just the consequences of climate change. I wonder if it's just poor education? a lack of imagination? or perhaps the US actually does live in a climate bubble separate to the rest of the world. I remember reading a book called "6 degrees" which detailed the changes in half degree (C) increments as the world warmed up. We're at 1.5 degrees now and the changes it forecast have already happened. It only went to 6 degrees as human society as we know it wouldn't get past this point. When the book was written it was thought it would take 25 years to get to 1 degree hotter, it actually only took 8 years. I call that fairly dramatic.

dude, some of them think the planet is flat and that the world was created like 6000 years ago ... what did you expect ?

 

[Kam7r]

I'll worry when the elites stop buying up all the beachfront property.

the "elites" ? which "elites" are you thinking to ? coz some of those "elites" might not be wiser than you ... better look at where the scientists are buying their homes

 

[NumberNine]

No point in beating everyday people over the head with stuff like this. We can't do anything to fix it and we contribute the least towards it, but internet copy paste journalists enjoy the revenue from the scary clickbait headlines.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

If anything we do is going to help the climate, then we better be ready to give up a lot of amenities in life which we all know how that's going to go.

 

[return]

Guys, hold in your farts.

 

[brunocasarini]

Another week, another "something is on the brink" eco-BS article. Knock it off, guys. We've been seeing those FUD headlines and "predictions" since the 70's and nothing they predicted has ever happened.

 

[OortCloud]

Another week, another "something is on the brink" eco-BS article. Knock it off, guys. We've been seeing those FUD headlines and "predictions" since the 70's and nothing they predicted has ever happened.

Ok we can all relax - Bruno (the well-known font of knowledge on the environment and world climate model) has told us it's ok.