How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? Two Sibling Scientists Found an Answer—and Shook the World

https://www.wired.com/story/amoc-collapse-atlantic-ocean/

by wiredmagazine

4 comments

  1. By Sandra Upson

    The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is like a huge heat pump, taking water from the tropics to the north, warming areas in Europe. But as climate change accelerates, the current is becoming less stable. It might even be headed to a shutdown.

    The AMOC helps keep Europe’s northern inhabitants comfortable. For example, a Norwegian city sees temperatures around –1° C in January, while, at the same latitude in Canada, temperatures hit –34° C. And it’s because of the AMOC, moving heat between hemispheres. But some evidence suggests that lately, less heat has been reaching northern Europe. The AMOC’s flow seems to have weakened by 15% since the middle of the 20th century. Looking back further, it is the weakest it has been in a millennium.

    A couple years ago, a brother-sister team of scientists—Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen—began researching if they could put a date on doom. If emissions continue as they are, when might the AMOC break? After years of refining their data process, they settled on a year: 2057.

    “We have to do something now,” the Ditlevsens stress. An AMOC shutdown could cause temperatures in Europe to drop 35 degrees. It would clobber food systems. And in the tropics, changes to monsoon seasons could pose a catastrophic threat to many millions of people.

    Read the full feature: [https://www.wired.com/story/amoc-collapse-atlantic-ocean/](https://www.wired.com/story/amoc-collapse-atlantic-ocean/)

  2. Climate modeling is a guessing game when it comes to dates. We surpassed 1.5°C way ahead of model forecasts.

    We could see AMOC collapse by 2027 just as easily as 2057.

  3. Shook the World? Hardly, the ‘world’ is mentally asleep staring at TikTok and developing phone neck while they blindly walk into crosswalks in front of cars. 98/100 (pretty smart) people have never heard of AMOC. Now if by ‘world’ they meant the 12 people that already cared about this….then sure.

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