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A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

nature.com

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Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#201

Post by olddustytrail »

wredue wrote: post #186
olddustytrail wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I - and probably you - will die sometime between 2025 and 2095. I wouldn't say that therefore our deaths are imminent.

That’s a ridiculous comparison. Single human lifetimes are only measured in decades. If the entirety of humans were very likely to be wiped out from 2025 to 2095, you would definitely call that imminent, and is a much more apt comparison.

That’s a ridiculous comparison. The vast majority of humans don't live anywhere near the Atlantic so there's no way the entirety of humans would be wiped out. My comparison was much more apt.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#202

Post by beedeebeedee »

hathchip wrote: post #108
pvaldes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good way to see the problem in a second Think about New York, is at 40 degrees N latitude. This means that if NY would be in the Atlantic coast of Europe would fall in Portugal! a little North to Lisbon! (38ºN). Sometimes Is easy to forget that NY is "Southern Europe" league. Southern than the North Coast of Spain. Now lets see Quebec (53ºN). Well, London is 51ºN. Without the sea current bringing hot tropi…

But the West Coast of North America is has milder winters than the East Coast, which has milder winters than the center. Shouldn't we expect London to end up with a similar climate as somewhere on the West Coast of Canada at the same latitude?

> Shouldn't we expect ... similar climate as ... West Coast of Canada at same latitude

The Pacific ocean has a similar current to the Gulf stream (AMOC) called the Kuroshio current. If the Gulf stream stops, you should expect the climate in London to be worse than the climate in the center of northern Canada.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#203

Post by the8472 »

malermeister wrote: post #18
mschild wrote: post #7

An article from livescience.com that may be worth a read. TLDR: if slowdown occurs, temperatures could drop by 5C in Europe and North America. What a 5C drop actually looks like they don't say. https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/gulf...

How does that 5C drop interact with the rise that we're currently concerned about? (Heatwave, wildfires in the med etc). I'm guessing it's hopelessly naive to assume it'll just... kinda cancel each other out?

I would guess we'll see steeper gradients which means more extreme weather.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#204

Post by Brusco_RF »

Fricken wrote: post #110
RandomLensman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are challenges to overcome but thinking of the future as dystopia can be counterproductive.

Kind of an irrelevant point to make. We're setting new emissions records, so nothing so far has been productive.

It's exceptionally relevant. Excuse my French, but this constant doomerism is really fucking up the kids.

>"More than half of the 16- to 25-year-olds in the Lancet survey said they believe humanity is doomed. And close to 40 percent said that fears about the future have made them reluctant to have children of their own." [1]

We gave an entire generation anxiety and depression, and it's going to wreak havoc on the fertility rate in a decade or so.

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-gen-z-climate-change-is-a...

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#205

Post by FollowingTheDao »

olddustytrail wrote: post #148
mschild wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mentions a potential collapse as early as 2025. More precisely 2025-2095. That is this century and it's accurate to say 2025 is imminent.

Yes, but I - and probably you - will die sometime between 2025 and 2095. I wouldn't say that therefore our deaths are imminent.

Obviously, the OP does not have children or does not care about the future children are the future animals or the future anything

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#206

Post by FollowingTheDao »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #161
refulgentis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memento mori: top comment made the same mistake[1], your contributions reinforced the top comment, and your separate individual reply is the second comment. Rushing to comment has deep effects on HN, the threading incentivizes appending to the top comments rather than replying. This will now be a philosophical debate about scientific trust for hours just because people assume the article says "collapse is happening s…

This is the single biggest flaw in how HN discussions are formed. I almost always downvote the top comment. Often they completely derail any sort of meaningful discussion. I have fantasized around a "forum garden" where we could experiment with other ways of facilitating discussions.

For myself, I’m looking for a forum that has no up votes or down votes.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#207

Post by colechristensen »

thumbuddy wrote: post #169
oceanthrowaway wrote: post #32

I’m a physical oceanographer. While I have only skimmed this article I would like to make two quick comments. 1) The AMOC is one of the most studied parts of the world ocean and predictions about its collapse have been made since Stommel in 1961. I think in general any study on its imminent collapse should be taken with a grain of salt and it would be wise to wait for further replication and the consensus of the comm…

So say it does collapse, in layman's terms what does that mean?

Europe would get cold.

Ocean currents bring lots of warm water from the south towards Europe making it quite a bit warmer than other places at similar latitudes. Cities in Europe are quite a bit further north than most people think.

Lots of other side effects as well would happen but be less known or surely predicted by models.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#208

Post by SkyMarshal »

bitdivision wrote: post #60
SkyMarshal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Europe will heat up, NA will cool down. Currently the Atlantic current brings hot water from the equatorial zones up the US east coast, hence the humidity there. And it brings cool water down from the Arctic to Europe’s west coast, hence the mild non-humid climate there. Reversing the current would reverse that dynamic. It might make Europe less suitable to wine growing, for one, which requires mild cool…

Isn't it the opposite? I was under the impression that warm water from the Caribbean / equitorial zones was currently brought over to Western Europe and the UK. If the AMOC collapses, that heat will presumably stay in the tropics, and North Western Europe will cool.

> I was under the impression that warm water from the Caribbean / equitorial zones was currently brought over to Western Europe and the UK.

It does after it's gone north along the US East coast yes, then it crosses over to Europe, but it's obviously not as hot anymore having dumped some of its heat into the US and the North Atlantic.

There's no current that goes directly from the equatorial regions straight up to the west coast of Europe.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#209

Post by RandomLensman »

ajmurmann wrote: post #194
RandomLensman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has not worked either so far is ever stronger talk about impending doom. We might have to contemplate things like geoengineering or whatever but thinking the future is bad is not enough. There has to be a positive vision, too.

There are plenty of ideas like carbon tax, or more clumsy ones like higher gasoline tax, banning gasoline cars, etc. But no country has sufficient buy-in to do anything that even just is a little inconvenient.

Again, not a positive vision there: initially increasing costs with a very long payoff period (and also having to live through the change already backed into the climate for quite some time)?

That cannot the best we can do - there has to be more we can get out of an energy transition. For example, could have an explicit policy of wanting lower energy costs in high cost places.

Re: A forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

#210

Post by SirMaster »

lamontcg wrote: post #114
SirMaster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying there are no scientists that predicted we would have more sea level rise than we actually do by now?

If you're asking if you can disprove the previous statement by finding a single example of a scientist who predicted wild rises in sea level that haven't happened, the answer is 'no'. Most scientists can still have historically been overly conservative even if you can find a few that made over the top predictions. It should be perfectly obvious that the presence of a few outliers doesn't invalidate the median of the…

I'm not trying to disprove anything.

I am trying to understand if there is some chance that this estimate could perhaps be an outlier.

For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#/media/File:Pee...

How can I know whether this prediction will end up being one of the blue line or one of the red line.

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