Critical Atlantic Current Significantly More Likely To Collapse Than Thought (theguardian.com) 72
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding "very concerning" as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth's past.
Climate scientists use dozens of different computer models to assess the future climate. However, for the complex Amoc system, these produce widely varying results, ranging from some that indicate no further slowdown by 2100 to those suggesting a huge deceleration of about 65%, even when carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning are gradually cut to net zero. The research combined real-world ocean observations with the models to determine the most reliable, and this hugely reduced the spread of uncertainty. They found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.
The Amoc is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic. The slowdown has to do with the Arctic's rapidly rising temperatures from global warming. "Warmer water is less dense and therefore sinks into the depths more slowly," explains the Guardian. "This slowing allows more rainfall to accumulate in the salty surface waters, also making it less dense, and further slowing the sinking and forming an Amoc feedback loop."
The new research has been published in the journal Science Advances.
Climate scientists use dozens of different computer models to assess the future climate. However, for the complex Amoc system, these produce widely varying results, ranging from some that indicate no further slowdown by 2100 to those suggesting a huge deceleration of about 65%, even when carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning are gradually cut to net zero. The research combined real-world ocean observations with the models to determine the most reliable, and this hugely reduced the spread of uncertainty. They found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.
The Amoc is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic. The slowdown has to do with the Arctic's rapidly rising temperatures from global warming. "Warmer water is less dense and therefore sinks into the depths more slowly," explains the Guardian. "This slowing allows more rainfall to accumulate in the salty surface waters, also making it less dense, and further slowing the sinking and forming an Amoc feedback loop."
The new research has been published in the journal Science Advances.
The world needs trillionaires (Score:4, Interesting)
Without trillionaires who will protect ethics and games journalism and women's sports?
Sure in the past our billionaires have been able to protect us. Spending thousands of hours on 4chan to make sure you knew what was really important.
But no mere billionaire can protect us from the woke mind virus. For that we need trillionaires.
Re: (Score:1)
Well it's not like he can do it himself any more, allegedly.
Re: The world needs trillionaires (Score:1, Troll)
Well, the upside is that Greenland is not going to be a target any longer.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry man, idpol was way more important than the climate. Maybe if you'd chosen someone more relatable than Greta?
Because of who ran 4chan at the time (Score:1)
the math was intro calculus ffs its not hard (Score:1)
than thought by cretins who shouldn't have had a say to begin with
Where to buy land now when it's cheap? (Score:2)
Re: Where to buy land now when it's cheap? (Score:2)
On Venus. Buy the place, even.
La Nina (Score:2)
Europe developed the industrial revolution.
--
Take chances, make mistakes. - Mary Tyler Moore
Re: (Score:2)
"Science is about a specific process: you make a hypothesis, you set up a test of your hypothesis, you test it, find it true or not and based on that your hypothesis becomes a scientific theory or a rejected hypothesis."
That's the junior-high version of science. The one done poorly on cardboard. It's sad that people still trot out the whole "it's a process" trope.
And yet that one sentence makes more sense than the rest of the post.
Re: "Research" = modelling (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Many years ago I did real, actual. science and the amount of computer-based modelling that we t on was insane - it could only have become more prevalent in the decades since. Nothing wrong with that - it's just another tool. But if someone has already decided that all scientists are wrong, then no amount of reason or experience is going to overturn their cultish belief.
Re: (Score:2)
And that's why we still don't have computers, and never will.
Re: (Score:3)
This is just pseudo-science talking point propaganda used by bad actors to push bad ideas.
Relativity did not make Newton incorrect, it just expanded upon his works and the limits he was working in at the time. Just like quantum theories or whatever doesn't make either Newton or Einstein incorrect. Just like modern evolutionary theories don't make Darwin incorrect even though we don't really used Darwin's work directly.
Science builds upon the past, it's actually quite rare that actual scientific theories f
Re: (Score:2)
Because it was the 1950's you numbnuts when did the concept of chromosomes come about? Like 50 years prior and the 48 number came from a guy counting with a fucking microscope
A guy counted wrong and you're ready to throw science out the window.
As for Wegener maybe stop just listeneing to what whatever dumbfuck Rogan has on this week and at least do the bare-fucking-minimum and read the Wikipedia.
Alfred Wegener has been mischaracterised as a lone genius whose theory of continental drift met widespread rejec
Re: (Score:2)
Anger is an emotion and your purposeful and bad faith ignorance is engaging. Shrimple as.
Re: (Score:2)
All this is actually evidence that science is progressing from less knowledge to having better understanding of the world, not that all theories are always wrong which is the claim you made above.
Re: "Research" = modelling (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank you for being one of the last to hang in the denial. I understand though, it is a soothing coping mechanism.
But yes, I will be fine. Before this hits, they will have spread my ashes. So long kids, and thanks for all the fish, you figure it out. Meanwhile? I will just keep on joyriding with the planet. Woot! Woot! Let's just keep denying it.
Re: "Research" = modelling (Score:1)
Weak troll, and dumb, too.
Do you know how nuclear power plants operate?
The people there can't really see the neutrons with the precision they'd like, because that's how nature works.
So instead of giving up, they develop and run "models" that "predict" the neutron flow from various delayed readings.
By your high standards that's neither science nor engineering, just data games.
The problems are similar enough that one can move between the fields with ease. Even the mathematical tools and methods that are used
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me you know nothing about modeling without telling me so directly :)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, written just like a report to the local KGB office by a good little Soviet collaborator, all buzzwords and fiction.
You'd be right at home in Moscow under Stalin. No wonder you're posting from 5 accounts as an AC.
You trumpistani subjects are from the species that gave us the exemplary Communist citizen.
Re: (Score:1)
And postings like that are why you are not only a blithering idiot, but a repulsive asshole.
Re: "Research" = modelling (Score:3)
Do you struggle up read the axes on graphs???
Pretty much all climatological estimates of overall earth temperature have been coming up worse in reality than all but the most pessimistic models, basically all the way since 1960s. The models absolutely aren't coming up hot. Stop fucking lying.
Re: (Score:1)
So... Thank feminism for that.
Actually, I'd like to thank you; if you were meant to reproduce, you would have.
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on how that works, you may just get reincarnated in the middle of it. You would certainly deserve that.
Re: (Score:1)
Context matters. Dumb people (like you) have severe trouble recognizing context.
Re: (Score:1)
What has feminism to do with having kids? More precisely: wanting kids?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have kids, I don't care what happens after me. Most people don't have any. So... Thank feminism for that.
Did you seriously just share with the world "Feminism made me unfuckable"...without being prompted to do so?
Likely doomed as a species (Score:5, Insightful)
The changes we have set off in the world today are not unlike those that precipitated the Great Dying 252 million years ago. We're at 420 ppm CO2 now but the permafrost is done for and after that the clathrates in the shallow seas are liable to let go, too. The current ice age is only 2.5 million years old and we've ended it. We may have triggered something akin to the Permian/Eocene Thermal Maximum.
There was some chance we could have headed this off, had we turned immediately and aggressively on the problem around the turn of the century. We have proven politically incapable of addressing this existential threat, and now that we might be mustering the will, the window may have closed.
We've had a good run, we anatomically modern humans, but this ending due to a lack of foresight is ... embarrassing .
Re: Likely doomed as a species (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why did with gave the scientific illiterate access to computers? There should be basic physics questionnaire or something before being allowed to use any modern technology, so that we do not have to read politically motivated anti-science comments from uneducated people such as "These guys in 1958 are vastly more convincing than modern climatologists". I mean, even completely ignoring future issues, this nonsense hurts my brain.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it was all of our responsibility to make sure our neighbors didn't turn out to be uneducated assholes, and we collectively failed. As it turns out, abdicating that responsibility to a department of education in a far-away land didn't actually satisfy the need.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes 1958. When unfiltered cigarettes were just fine for pregnant women. Well that might explain a lot of boomers and their thinking.
Re: (Score:1)
Aside from them being convincing, I'm interested in hearing what fact asserted there is wrong.
Amusingly, those guys you DISMISS are agreeing with you, you sanctimonious cunt. The article from way back in 1958 explains how the AMOC very specifically is overturned, and the colossal climate consequences.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We've had a good run, we anatomically modern humans, but this ending due to a lack of foresight is ... embarrassing .
Indeed. An utterly pathetic performance. Obviously, there are smaller performances on the same abysmally low level, like not having gotten rid of war and poverty. The root-cause, as far as I can see, is too many complete assholes and too many complete idiots cheering them on.
What happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened 1600 years ago?
Re:What happened? (Score:5, Informative)
The Earth was exiting a period of relative geological and climatic stability and entering a cooling phase, which would have helped strengthen the AMOC. This process was then enhanced by a large scale volcanic eruption, thought to be in North America, with the ejecta from that and a series of subsequent eruptions leading to a significant deviation from the trendline, a mini-iceage known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LILIA) similar to the Maunder Minimum, a multi-decade period of cooler than statistically expected temperatures (up to 2.7C cooler than average in European summers). This is reflected in tree-ring records which show highly stunted growth for the time, ice cores from polar ice cores, and some of the remaining writings from the period that describe widespread crop failures.
Re: (Score:2)
1600 years "is as far back as the new research stretches" --- according to https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com].
For a longer view of climate change --- https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com].
We need to thank Trump (Score:2, Troll)
1) close the straight of Hormuz causing fuel prices to skyrocket - now all those people hesitant to go green because it was too expensive? well it is not too expensive NOW haha!
2) plunge the world economy into recession - nothing cuts fuel use like a recession and a prolonged fuel shortage is just the ticket.
3) reduce the population - too many people! the way to reduce the numbers - in
Hurray, a good sign! (Score:1)
Then the climate change deniers will be proven right!
Instead of dying the heat death in Europe, we get a new "Ice Age", yay!!
And we can burn oil, win win win!
And we will have a construction boom, especially tunnels, and pipelines, something ice sheet proof.
And on top of that, we can test Mars habitats on top of the ice shield.
Well, considering that a dramatic cold switch takes only a few dozen years to drastically transform Europe (probably all of the north) into "Hel" (look it up if you do not know what th
thought (Score:2)
It is thought to be more likely to collapse than thought.
That would be a neat trick indeed (Score:1)
If you could figure out how to recreate it on the small scale, you could do away with that pesky second law of thermodynamics [wikipedia.org] and have perfect thermal insulation, heat pumps with double digit COPs over any temperature difference, and probably a perpetual motion Sterling engine while you're at it.
And if you have this magical planet-scale method of stopping the transport of heat from hot equatorial regions to cold polar regions...why you could solve all of global warming too! Just pick your least favorite cou
too bad you can't add salt to fix the problem (Score:2)
I remember someone proposing to add salt to the ocean water to counteract the effects of ice melting. Why can't we just get salt from the dead sea and dump it gradually where the AMOC's water is loosing it's salinity?