The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could be headed for a sudden 'cliff-like' shutdown.
A study published Friday warned that a systemic collapse of the Atlantic Ocean currents driving warm water from the tropics toward Europe could be more likely than researchers previously estimated — an event that would send temperatures plummeting in much of the continent.
An AMOC shutdown would cause temperatures to rise in the Southern Hemisphere but plunge dramatically in Europe. In the study’s model, London cools by an average of 18°F and Bergen, Norway by 27°F. An AMOC failure would also cause sea levels to rise along North America’s east coast.The paper by Dutch colleagues adds more weight to recent warnings, such as the OECD Climate Tipping Points report of 2022 and the Global Tipping Points report published 2023.
“The research makes a convincing case that the AMOC is approaching a tipping point based on a robust, physically based early warning indicator,” said Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “What it cannot and does not say is how close the tipping point, because… there is insufficient data to make a statistically reliable estimate of that.
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