Forty-four of the world's leading climate scientists have called on Nordic policymakers to address the potentially imminent and "devastating" collapse of key Atlantic Ocean currents.
In an open letter published online Monday (Oct. 21), University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann and other eminent scientists say the risks of weakening ocean circulation in the Atlantic have been greatly underestimated and warrant urgent action.
The currents in question are those forming the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a giant ocean conveyor belt that includes the Gulf Stream and transports vital heat to the Northern Hemisphere. Research shows the AMOC is slowing down and could soon reach a tipping point due to global warming, throwing Earth's climate into chaos.
Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks, and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there's ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around... The world has been upended. What's going on?
While these scenes sound like something from a Hollywood disaster movie, a new scientific study investigating a key element of Earth's climate system – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – says this could occur for real as soon as 2050.
(arxiv) Probability Estimates of a 21st Century AMOC Collapse
Abstract
There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.
(Score: 1, Informative) by bart on Thursday November 28, @10:25AM (3 children)
Michael Mann, the inventor of the infamous hockeystick. Statisticians proved that his algorithm would show a hockey stick when fed with white noise!. Ref: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GL021750 [wiley.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by bart on Thursday November 28, @01:28PM
5. Discussion and Conclusions
[18] PC analyses are sensitive to linear transformations of data, even if such transformations only appear to be “standardizations”. Here we have shown, in the case of MBH98, that a “standardization” step (that the authors did not even consider sufficiently important to disclose at the time of their study) significantly affected the resulting PC series.
Indeed, the effect of the transformation is so strong that a hockey-stick shaped PC1 is nearly always generated from (trendless) red noise with the persistence properties of the North American tree ring network. This result is disquieting, given that the NOAMER PC1 has been reported to be essential to the shape of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction.
(Score: 4, Informative) by quietus on Thursday November 28, @06:45PM
Red noise.
One of the many problems is that both Mann and McIntyre and McKitrick use rough guesses for both white and red noise at centennial timescales:
Von Storch and Zorita conclude: [wiley.com]
The heaviest criticism, in my opinion, of McIntyre and McKitrick's (MM05) work comes from Huybers [wiley.com]. A few choice quotes (emphasis mine):
In summary, Huybers states,
It is not clear-cut.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @09:24PM
No such thing happened. The "debunker" is Heartland Institute alum.
Easy to forget the North report, isn't it? The original research has been validated other ways, and (this part is easy to forget) the original graphs included error ranges.
The only people who know like climatologist the limits of numerical computing accuracy are nuclear bomb modellers. von Neumann himself had a hand in some important weather computing shit after WW2, and some of his lamentations on the subject strangely resemble chaos theory.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday November 28, @01:15PM (8 children)
As far as I can recall they have been playing this 'what-if' scenario now for decades. Every year there are multiple reports that "soon" (TM) the circulation of the (north-) Atlantic will collapse and it will spell DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM for us all. Then it just doesn't happen. But "soon" and then they move the goal post a few more years into the future and tweak some parameters of their model. Eventually they'll be right and vindicated and all the wrong guesses previously will vanish. The current number now is that it will collapse sometime between the 2030's to the 2050's or sometime past 2100. Eventually they'll be right.
Either they don't quite know where the tipping point for failure is or their models are just filled with crap. Or they have run multiple models and then just picked the one with the best/worst result and made it the one they hang their entire theory on. Like with so many other models ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 28, @01:29PM (5 children)
>they don't quite know where the tipping point for failure is
Obviously.
Have you ever contemplated actually collecting sub surface oceanographic climate data? I seriously doubt that the scientific community has access to the military submarine data (that's a matter of national security competitive advantage) and, so, they mostly bob around on surface ships dropping sensors on miles long cables to read things like temperature, salinity, and a rough measure of current velocity and vector...
Commercial surface ships don't collect this data, just science funded voyages...
Based on these precious few point measurements in oceans over 1.3 billion cubic kilometers in volume, they are attempting to predict the recurrence of events that happen roughly once every 10,000 years.
So, yeah, +/-1% is to be expected.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday November 28, @02:08PM (4 children)
True. But it's hard to look past the idea that they are also picking models and theories to fit a narrative. Not the other way around.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 28, @03:04PM
>they are also picking models and theories to fit a narrative
Lots of people in this world do that, including journalists and especially politicians who cite scientists as their sources.
The oceanographers I have known would be among the last people who would do such cherry picking. They are mostly far too up front about the uncertainty of their conclusions to engage in anything resembling political debate.
If TFA's sources are the actual oceanographers, I would take what they say much more at face value than the skepticism that should be applied to tabloid sensationalist journalists.
If we project the exaggerations, fabrications and outright fantastic lies that some of today's leaders are engaged in onto everyone and everything that is published, we might as well just ignore everything in the news and wait for the radioactive fallout to start registering in our own backyards where we can trust our own Geiger counters to tell us how bad it really is.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quietus on Thursday November 28, @05:27PM (2 children)
Carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. Warmer air can contain more moisture. Both combined translated to an increase in kinetic and potential energy in the atmosphere. Add more energy to a process and it starts going to extreme values. Add even more energy and your system (the integrated sum of its processes) becomes chaotic.
There is no narrative. There's just physics.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Mykl on Thursday November 28, @10:13PM
But the good news is that the temperature drop from the loss of the Atlantic current will be offset by the global temperature rise, so it all balances out.
What's that? Ocean levels? Well, clearly that's not an issue once the current stops pushing all of that water up from the South!
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday November 29, @11:18PM
Yes, but this has nothing to do with the Atlantic Circulation currents. This current is getting killed by melt water. Melt water doesn't contain salt, so it doesn't sink. This is slowing the circulation. It's down more than 50% already. When it collapses, no one knows, but at current rate, it will collapse sooner rather than later. It will kick in big change in local climates, especially for Western/Northern Europe and Eastern North America.
That's all.
The only thing it has to do with CO2 is that it's causing the warming that is melting the ice resulting in the melt water that is slowing the circulation.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by chewbacon on Thursday November 28, @11:07PM (1 child)
These guys just want to stay employed. If they don’t keep churning the doomsday scenario, someone else will get the grant and do it.
(Score: 2, Troll) by BlueCoffee on Friday November 29, @11:22PM
97% of scientists agree with who is paying them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday November 28, @01:23PM (1 child)
Let's say we can develop an accurate model. At what statistical certainty do we decide that action should be taken?
Say the authors are wrong by factor 2 and the probability is 25 % chance of destroying Western Europe should action be taken?
What if they are wrong by factor 10 and the probability is only 5 %? Is it worth taking action at that point?
==
Nb: Western Europe population 200M, accounting for 20 % of world GDP; I neglect impact on other regions of course.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday November 28, @02:41PM
A reasonable point. There are lots of places where we (the readers here) don't understand the error bars, or even know that they exist. It's not a one-dimensional ignorance.
OTOH, we also don't know the probability of it not happening if one of the minor assumptions is wrong. I.e., ISTM that the global warming is extremely likely to shut down the AMOC, but the time-frame is uncertain. So this claim is just asserting that "The problem you should have been expecting is likely to happen more quickly than you thought.", which seems plausible...and impossible to disprove.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by DadaDoofy on Thursday November 28, @02:13PM (11 children)
"A two-day climate conference in Prague, organised by the Czech division of the international Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel), which took place on November 12-13 in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic in Prague, “declares and affirms that the imagined and imaginary ‘climate emergency’ is at an end”.
The communiqué, drafted by the eminent scientists and researchers who spoke at the conference, makes clear that for several decades climate scientists have systematically exaggerated the influence of CO2 on global temperature."
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/19/climate-scientists-officially-declare-climate-emergency-at-an-end/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday November 28, @02:44PM (7 children)
Your source is known to be biased and unreliable. It was founded to promote the idea that climate change isn't happening.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Thursday November 28, @03:41PM (6 children)
Funny, the source of TFA is known to be biased and unreliable. It was founded to promote the idea climate change is happening.
(Score: 4, Touché) by HiThere on Thursday November 28, @05:15PM
Which one? There are three sources listed in the summary.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @05:44PM
You're really mailing it in today. Usually your trolling is just bad, but you're not even trying with the whole, "I know you are, but what am I?" bit.
In that spirit, I'd say Why don't you stop hitting yourself? Why don't you stop hitting yourself? [wikipedia.org]
Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 28, @06:17PM (3 children)
What is crystal clear is that neither politicians nor the public want to hear about trouble, and especially be blamed for trouble.
For decades -- decades! -- scientists have been sounding the alarm on Global Warming. And here many of us are, still snatching for comforting false narratives, meanwhile accusing the scientists of being the ones who are spinning the false narrative, for the money. As if in 30+ years, a false narrative about the climate could withstand debunking. As if the narrative hasn't been tested and refined over and over and over, in every way we can think of, and found to hold up.
One dead simple way to see the Climate Change problem is to look at CO2 levels. For 3 million years, CO2 levels in the atmosphere ranged from 180 ppm to 280 ppm. Now, suddenly, thanks to us, it has jumped over 400 ppm. Can't make a major change like that without repercussions. But that apparently is too, shall we say, "airy", for most people to accept. No, I think what it will take to make believers out of people is a massive, highly visible change, such as the remaining ice sheets melting and most of the state of Florida ending up underwater.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @11:16PM (1 child)
Oh, you poor dumb son of a bitch [quotes.net]. I guess all those millions those "climate scientists" have poured into advertising and marketing to make you believe there's some sort of problem with manly fuels like coal and oil have been working!
Yeah, those "scientists" make all kinds of shit up so they can buy more yachts, beach homes and private islands. It's a huge scam from the get-go!
They profit enormously from their lies by...telling lies...by making shit up...wait...wait...okay, yeah...getting paid by...Soros. Yeah, that's it. That commie bastard Soros wants to destroy our society so he pays these "scientists" hundreds of millions to lie and lie and lie.
I mean, it really is all about the money. Cui bono? Yeah, it's the "climate scientists," no one else could have a financial interest in how we look at it? I mean there aren't any corporations or governments who would lose profits if fossil fuel use were reduced/eliminated, right? Right?
Fucking lying commie "climate scientists." Yeah, I got your "climate" right here!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, @08:55PM
(parent runs a high risk of being Poe'd)
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday November 29, @11:25PM
Yeah, but, but, the next Quarter numbers have to go up so can we delay the "emergency"?? ktnkby.
Seriously, as long as we are not seeing 20cm sea level rises per year, it's an abstract concept to everyone, including the people that are buying those beach properties in Florida with hope of flipping the to the next sucker for more. Maybe the North Atlantic circulation collapse will be a wake up call, but who knows. The "ice free Northwest passage" was too remote and no one noticed. Also, it had no local consequences.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @05:37PM (2 children)
When I moved to New England, there was a seven-foot tall pile of snow out my front window that sat there all winter long - until the city came with front-end loaders, loaded it into a dump truck, and carried it away. 2014.
For the next five years, I would have to shovel around 2-3 feet of snow from around my vehicle if I wanted to use it. This occurred multiple times per winter. ~~ 2018
Things started warming a bit, noticeably, and snow reduced to a foot, then started melting within a couple days of falling. Then melting the day after it falls. ~~ 2022.
Last year, I had to shovel snow on the front sidewalk once. I was out of town, but keeping watch on the weather / storms, as I hired a snow removal service to do the bidding as needed. They did it once. There was three inches of snow (but neighbors call you in for citation if you don't clear it.)
This year, I predict less. Usually it snows for / around Halloween; this year it was a mid-spring day for halloween. Trees usually lose their trees by mid-late October. Some trees, Nov 26, still have green leaves on them. It's raining today, the 28th, whereas I'd expect a snowstorm. It's rather warm outside. A couple days ago I was outside and went "Huh," as I saw some flowers blooming.
I'll be surprised if any snow this winter sticks around for more than a day. I'll be surprised if there are more freezing days than not freezing days. I'll be surprised if there are four days below ten degrees F. I need to retain a snow removal service, just in case, but I'll be surprised if I need to call them in.
Go ahead. Say the climate hasn't changed in the past 20 years. We're listening to you -- really. Not taking seriously, but listening, and talking shit about you behind your back.
Go ahead and call a study biased, or whatever; go ahead and say the results are exaggerated, but if you say it's not happening -- people are looking outside, comparing to their younger years, and seeing how wrong you are.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Friday November 29, @06:38PM (1 child)
Your personal anecdotal "evidence", gathered over a tiny ten year span of the millions of years humans have lived on this planet, may be good enough for you to believe in climate change and tipping points, but anecdotes don't equal science.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday November 29, @07:07PM
But I don't care what happened 1,000,000 years ago, or even 100 years ago. I look at what has happened in my lifetime and what will probably happen in what is left of my life, because that will affect me, my family and particularly my children and grandchildren. And the weather is changing rapidly. The cycle of sunshine and rain in NW France is very different from what it was 20 or 30 years ago. The floods in S France and Spain have not been seen in living memory. These are all new (to us) phenomena.
It is affecting sea levels, it is affecting the growing of food, it is changing how people must plan for the future. It is changing how we plan to build homes and towns. It is changing how we protect the people who are alive today. Not for what will happen in another 1,000,000 years, or even 1,000 years, but what will happen in my lifetime and the lifetime of the people who are important to me.
Of course I understand science. It may have happened long ago in the past, maybe even several times. This time it is different - it affects me.
You can ignore it and pretend it isn't happening. But don't criticise others for believing in what they can see happening every day. That is far more persuasive than your glib comments. Keep you blindfold on and pretend that it isn't really happening - but that is not science. Seeing things change - now that is science.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday November 28, @03:02PM (2 children)
One thing we can be certain is the proposed actions in light of the fearmongering propaganda will be intended to grind other completely unrelated axes ("... and this is why we need more DEI in video games ..." "... and this is why we need to support Israel no matter how genocidal they act ...") or some variation on closing the barn door after the horses left centuries ago or they'll actually intentionally implement policy to create more human suffering. The absolute last thing they'll do is sensibly prepare to react to the problems.
Just watch, I'll be proven correct.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @05:40PM
yeah, tell us all about that.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @05:46PM
I suppose, like a broken clock, you'll hit on something one of these days.
I'm not holding my breath.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, @05:50PM
And make some ridiculous trollish statements about how climate change is all bullshit.
Then I got here and it was already done, and by the usual morons too. The only question is if they actually believe their tripe or, as with me, they're just trolling for laughs/wind up the credulous/whatever, like me.
Thanks for harshing my mellow, jerks! Grrr!!!
(Score: 4, Informative) by quietus on Thursday November 28, @06:00PM (2 children)
Editors, the link (BBC) The Atlantic Ocean's currents are on the verge of collapse. This is what it means for the planet suggests that the news is coming from the BBC. That is not correct.
The link refers to an article on sciencefocus.com (which also have the BBC reference in their header), but that site does not have any current link to the BBC. The Science Focus magazine [wikipedia.org] is part of a publishing group, Immediate Media Company [wikipedia.org], which acquired BBC Magazines from a hedge fund in 2011.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Thursday November 28, @06:18PM (1 child)
Noted thank you. I don't think that it justifies a change to the story now that you have made it clear in your comment.
Initial and brief investigations suggest that there is still a business link between the BBC and ScienceFocus.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Thursday November 28, @06:56PM
Link to a BBC podcast, titled Ocean Current Collapse [bbc.co.uk] (July 2023).
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Friday November 29, @11:50PM
I've been following predictions like these for last 25 years. These are not "doomsday" predictions. These are realities that will happen. More specifically, the AMOC, which is part of the Thermohyline Circulation system, will collapse rather quickly. There is really nothing we can do about it anymore. It will collapse in next few decades and this will have big changes for Northern and Western Europe (especially the UK and Ireland and Scandinavian nations) and Eastern North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation#Slowdown_or_collapse_of_AMOC [wikipedia.org]
As to people writing "we don't have accurate models" or labs or whatever ... well, we have only ONE lab. And that lab is this planet. The rest are assumptions. So when the shit hits it fan, that is when it will start flying. Is there really a need to argue whether the shit is sticky enough or the fan spinning fast enough? That's the absurdity of some of the comments here.
This is about ocean currents that are being affected as consequences of global warning -- you know, ice melting. They are already being affected -- that's measured today and in the very recent past (years and decades). But whether it collapses in 2050 or 2070 or 2035, well, ok... We have no choice now, we'll have to live through it. I just wonder whether people will look up from their echo chambers once AMOC does collapse or they'll blame their favourite scapegoats instead (aka, Chinese, Russians, Americans, "democrats", "scientists", etc.). The ice-free north-west passage sure didn't make too many look up. AMOC collapse will hit closer to home though.