The decline of key Atlantic currents is underway, and it’s been flooding parts of the US for 20 years
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/the-decline-of-key-atlantic-currents-is-underway-and-its-been-flooding-parts-of-the-us-for-20-years
by GeraldKutney
3 comments
Oh no, the rich people are suffering 🥱
A recent paper suggests that the AMOC is somewhat more resilient than thought earlier.
“Continued Atlantic overturning circulation even under climate extremes” Nature 638, pp987–994 (2025) looked at the relationship between currents north and south of the equator and came to the conclusion that AMOC collapse is unlikely this century. It’s a glimmer of hope but obviously not a lot.
Some interesting food for thought: there’s somewhat clear evidence to suggest that the AMOC has already weakened in response to anthropogenic climate change (although some recent analyses cast doubt on that). Conventional academic consensus has always postulated that a proportional drop in average temperatures should have occured across Europe. Instead, not only have we seen the opposite happen, but western and NW Europe specifically have been warming at such an unprecedented rate (almost twice the global average) that it’s leaving the climatology community very confused. This effect was recently discussed by both Vautard et al. and Kornhuber et al. – the former discuss how observed warming trends in Western Europe have vastly outpaced what convential climate models suggest should be happening, whereas the latter identifies NW Europe as a warming hotspot. There is actually a precedent here, and it’s one that I hope to develop my own research on and potentially take it to PhD level. In the context of what I’ve mentioned here there’s two broad elements; convential model-based analyses are vastly underestimating the role of atmospheric dynamics in determining Western Europe’s climatological anomalies which could potentially overcompensate for the loss of Atlantic influences, and the proportional relevance of poleward oceanic heat transport in determining midlatitudal climate anomlies in the context of anthropogenic climate change.
Additional note: I got criticized the other day for my “scholar” tone and yes, I do have a habit of being overly academic in my approach to these subjects. I’m not trying to be condescending or act superior, it’s just that I’m pretty much always knee deep in these subjects as I’m working on research almost every day.
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