A CRITICAL OCEAN SYSTEM MAY BE HEADING FOR COLLAPSE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE, STUDY FINDS

Fri 06 August 2021:

According to a recent scientific study, human-caused climate change is jeopardizing a major current system that plays a key role in transporting warmer and cooler waters across the Atlantic, which could have disastrous consequences for global temperatures and critical ecosystems.

A new study suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a section of the Gulf Stream, transports warm water from the tropics northward and cold water from the North Atlantic to the south, is slowing down, and bringing less warm water to the Northern Atlantic ecosystems.

This natural heat redistribution has long helped to maintain regional temperature and weather conditions, but scientists have warned that the mechanism is slowing down in some areas.

While the current is “very likely” to weaken this century, a total breakdown is unlikely, according to a UN research released in 2019.

However, a new analysis led by Niklas Boer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the situation may be significantly worse than previously assumed.

“The current changes may be tied to “an almost complete loss of stability of the AMOC over the course of the last century,” said Boer, in the study.

“The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse.”

Should the AMOC continue to stop delivering warm waters up north, it would lead to severe repercussions to Earth’s other critical ecosystems, potentially impacting the Amazon rainforest, monsoon seasons for various continents, and the Antarctic ice sheet.

“The mere possibility that the AMOC tipping point is close should be motivation enough for us to take countermeasures,” Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Ireland’s Maynooth University, told The Washington Post. “The consequences of a collapse would likely be far-reaching.”

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