Global warming may precipitate the collapse of an important ocean current system this century, maybe as early as 2025, resulting in global pandemonium.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, controls the climate by bringing warm, tropical waters north and cold water south.
Because of global warming, AMOC was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years, and researchers saw warning indications of a tipping point in 2021.
The new study places the collapse between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050 if global carbon emissions are not curbed. Evidence from previous collapses implies temperature shifts of 10 degrees Celsius in a few decades, however, these occurred during ice ages.
“The expected tipping point, given that we continue business as usual with greenhouse gas emissions, is much earlier than we expected”, says co-author Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics and stochastic models in biology at the University of Copenhagen.
“It wasn’t a result where we said, ‘Oh, yeah, here it is. We were completely perplexed”, Ditlevsen added.
“There is still considerable uncertainty about where the AMOC tipping point is, but the new study adds to the evidence that it is much closer than we thought just a few years ago”, said Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of ocean physics at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
“The scientific evidence now suggests that we cannot rule out reaching a tipping point within the next decade or two”, Rahmstorf added.
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