The Atlantic Ocean’s currents are on the verge of collapse. This is what it means for the planet

Scientists are concerned that the Atlantic Ocean’s system of currents may be about to reach a tipping point. If it does, it’ll have severe consequences for all of us.

Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks, and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there’s ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around… The world has been upended. What’s going on?

While these scenes sound like something from a Hollywood disaster movie, a new scientific study investigating a key element of Earth’s climate system – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – says this could occur for real as soon as 2050.

So what is it and why is it important? Are such catastrophic events, like those mentioned above, likely to happen if it disrupted, and what – if anything – can we do about it?
Why the AMOC matters and what’s changing

The AMOC – often called ‘the great ocean conveyor’ – is a large system of ocean currents that includes the Gulf Stream. It circulates warm, salty water from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic, where
it cools and becomes denser. As this water cools, it sinks and flows back southward at deeper levels, before eventually rising back to the surface throughout the rest of the ocean, creating a continuous loop
of circulation.

It transports vast amounts of heat around the Atlantic – equivalent to boiling about a thousand billion kettles. It’s responsible for 25 per cent of the total heat flowing into the northern hemisphere by the ocean and atmosphere. This heat warms the winds that blow in off the Atlantic over Northwest Europe, contributes to the relatively mild climate these regions experience and helps to stop Arctic sea ice from spreading down beyond Norway.

But its effects are felt more globally, too. If the AMOC gets weaker and causes the northern hemisphere to cool, all the climate belts of the world – including the equatorial rainfall belt – will be shifted further south.

It is therefore a key component of the stability of the global climate system. As global warming continues, the surface of the high-latitude North Atlantic is getting much warmer. It’s also getting fresher because of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice, and due to increased precipitation. This makes the surface ocean less dense, which prevents it from sinking, in turn weakening this important climate system.

Changes in the location and strength of winds blowing across the ocean can also alter the AMOC. During the Ice Age, stronger winds led to a stronger Gulf Stream, helping strengthen parts of it. In the opposite case, a future warmer world, models predict that winds may contribute to a weaker AMOC.
Is it definitely changing?

Direct instrumental measurements of the strength of the AMOC only began in 2004, when the RAPID array was installed across the Atlantic. After nearly 20 years of continuous measurements, the data show a 10-per-cent decrease in its strength, but because the observations show such a lot of change from year to year, we can’t be sure that this is a meaningful, long-term decline.

Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/atlantic-current-collapse?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-intl

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