Study Warns AMOC Collapse Could Add 10 Years of Warming as Europe Cools by 27F
Updated
Updated · IFLScience · Aug 18
Study Warns AMOC Collapse Could Add 10 Years of Warming as Europe Cools by 27F
3 articles · Updated · IFLScience · Aug 18
Summary
Nature Geoscience published a modeling study finding that past weak periods in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation made Earth hotter overall, not merely shifted heat between regions.
10 years of today’s human-caused warming could be added by a weak AMOC, lead author Christo Buizert said, because less heat is vented in the North Atlantic and more builds up in the ocean.
Warming oceans and fresh water from Greenland’s melting ice sheet are slowing the current system by making northern waters less cold, less salty and less dense, weakening the sinking flow that drives it.
Northern Europe could still cool sharply in an AMOC collapse—by 9 to 27 degrees F—showing the study’s central contrast: regional cooling alongside stronger global warming.
The circulation has weakened many times over the last 2.7 million years, and the authors say those past shifts offer a warning for what rising temperatures may trigger next.