A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study — a planetary-scale disaster that would transform weather and climate.
Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change.
But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.
This research suggests it’s more likely than not to collapse by 2050.
Like a conveyor belt, the AMOC pulls warm surface water from the southern hemisphere and the tropics and distributes it in the cold North Atlantic. The colder, saltier water then sinks and flows south. The mechanism keeps parts of the Southern Hemisphere from overheating and parts of the Northern Hemisphere from getting unbearably cold, while distributing nutrients that sustain life in marine ecosystems.
The impacts of an AMOC collapse would leave parts of the world unrecognizable.
An AMOC collapse “is a really big danger that we should do everything we can to avoid,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a physical oceanographer at Potsdam University in Germany who was not involved in the latest research.
That’s the point though.
They don’t have to be right.
They need to scare the shit out of the people who could maybe get some traction in addressing this thing. There have been a disproportionate amount of tipping point events happening far sooner than predicted, and/or worse than expected. Anything we can do to get people to actually act is worthwhile.
You shut your whore mouth, you socialist. Capitalism profits on the misery of others, and that’s the way we like it!
/s