The potential collapse of a key Atlantic ocean current − due to human-caused climate change − is in the news again.
You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a scarier scenario than what’s going on now with the “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC),” the fickle Atlantic ocean current whose weakening and eventual collapse could change the climate and weather for hundreds of millions of people.
A pair of new scientific studies detail the present and potential future of the AMOC, which was the ocean current at the center of the fictional (and scientifically inaccurate) “Day After Tomorrow” climate change disaster movie in 2004.
In one study released April 8, scientists at the University of Miami determined that over the past 20 years, the AMOC has already been weakening at four different locations in the Atlantic. In the other study, released April 16, a separate group of European scientists said the AMOC will weaken by 50% by 2100, potentially eventually leading to its “collapse.”
A weakening AMOC means the Atlantic Ocean’s climate‑regulating currents slow down over a period of a few decades, while a collapse means the entire current system crosses a tipping point and mostly shuts down − triggering abrupt, potentially irreversible global climate disruptions.
Studies – https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx4298
I remember The Day After Tomorrow, it was an okay film but it solidified in me the fear of climate change. The movie may not be scientifically accurate, mainly because they got the temperatures backwards. In the movie, the world froze starting at the poles. IRL, it’s going to boil and burn starting from the equator.
Iirc that’s already started. All the growing zones have moved further north or south from where they used to be when I was a kid (back in the early 60’s).
Oh yeah I’ve seen it myself. I’d like to move up north to get ahead of it, but there’s national lines to get across and taking my pets would be difficult at best.
I’ve also been noticing that since I was a kid (90s/00s), back then there was a white winter every singe year in my area. Now we’re lucky if we get any snow at all during winter.
Then I’ll hear some rube say that ‘global warming isn’t real,’ like what bitch?! Have you not been paying attention?!
While that is true. If the Atlantic ocean current stops, the poles will freeze, and start a new ice age in northern Europe and North America, while also boiling the equator.
At least northern Asia will be fine
I tiought it was ice age in north europe and heat waves and hurricanes in north america, it carries hot water up north and cold water from the poles down the american east coast.