Global Climate Regulation by Ocean Currents May Fail by the Year 2050, Study

According to recent study, if present greenhouse gas emissions continue, ocean currents that transfer temperatures and precipitation between the tropics and the North Atlantic are anticipated to collapse around the middle of the century. According to research published in the journal Nature Communications, stopping these currents might have detrimental effects on the planet’s climate, including a future where Europe would become colder, more warming would occur in the tropics, and more storms would occur in the North Atlantic.

The analysis from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) currents are expected to collapse in this century, most likely in 2057, using advanced statistical tools on data on ocean temperature from the previous 150 years.

Peter Ditlevsen, co-corresponding author of the paper, remarked that “our result underscores the importance of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”

The AMOC, a component of the worldwide system of ocean currents, makes a considerable contribution to transferring heat from the tropics to the northernmost Atlantic areas by ensuring that surface water is transformed into deep, southbound ocean currents at the northernmost latitudes.

This makes room for equatorial surface waters to move northward, which is essential for preserving the North Atlantic region’s relatively moderate temperature.

After analyzing “early warning signals” shown by ocean currents as they start to become unstable, the researchers got to their findings. Even though these AMOC-related signals have been observed before, cutting-edge statistical techniques have made it feasible to anticipate the collapse of the currents with accuracy.

The study looked at sea surface temperatures in a particular region of the North Atlantic from 1870 to the present. These sea surface temperatures, which have only been directly recorded for the last 15 years, are “fingerprints” attesting to the power of the AMOC.

Another co-corresponding author on the paper, Susanne Ditlevsen, said, “We’ve created calculations that offer a more robust prediction of when a collapse of the AMOC is most likely to occur, something we had not been able to accomplish previously.

The research was at odds with the conclusion of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate shift (IPCC) report, which said that a sudden shift in the AMOC was very unlikely to occur in this century.