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Gulf Stream current could collapse in 2025, plunging Earth into climate chaos: 'We were actually bewildered' (www.livescience.com)

submitted 1 year ago by darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee to c/news@beehaw.org

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A vital ocean current system that helps regulate the Northern Hemisphere's climate could collapse anytime from 2025 and unleash climate chaos, a controversial new study warns.

The Atlantic Meridional Ocean Current (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, governs the climate by bringing warm, tropical waters north and cold water south.

But researchers now say the AMOC may be veering toward total breakdown between 2025 and 2095, causing temperatures to plummet, ocean ecosystems to collapse and storms to proliferate around the world. However, some scientists have cautioned that the new research comes with some big caveats.

The AMOC can exist in two stable states: a stronger, faster one that we rely upon today, and another that is much slower and weaker. Previous estimates predicted that the current would probably switch to its weaker mode sometime in the next century.

Related: Gulf Stream could be veering toward irreversible collapse, a new analysis warns

But human-caused climate change may push the AMOC to a critical tipping point sooner rather than later, researchers predicted in a new study, published Tuesday (July 25) in the journal Nature Communications.

"The expected tipping point — given that we continue business as usual with greenhouse gas emissions — is much earlier than we expected," co-author Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics and stochastic models in biology at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science.

"It was not a result where we said: 'Oh, yeah, here we have it'. We were actually bewildered."

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[–] maegul@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Yep. It’s been on the radar for a while, the film didn’t pull it out of nowhere. Though I think back in the day it was always thought of as a fairly unlikely scenario. But that was some 20 years ago. A lot has sadly not changed at all since then.