The issue is that the Atlantic currents may be shutting down. If that happens, Western Europe will become drastically colder. The article doesn’t make this point very coherently.
There's a linked Washington Post article at the bottom, that links to an updated Washington Post article that says: I also quoted two prominent researchers who think this pattern reflects a much feared slowdown in Atlantic ocean circulation, a scenario made famous by the film The Day After Tomorrow. Granted, even if they’re right, what’s happening here will be nothing like the movie. At most, the circulation may be s…
That's bullocks. That's not how "global warming" works, which is why scientists are typically careful to call it "climate change." The temperature of a region is predominantly affected by ocean and air currents. Sunny Marseille in France with its Mediterranean climate is the same latitude as New England. Montreal gets bitter cold for 5 months of the year but London, a full 5deg further north, gets a few days of snow and a lot of rain.
These differences in regional weather at the same or similar latitudes are waaaaay bigger than the few degrees global average increase we see in world-is-ending predictions, and are entirely due to these ocean currents. If they slow down significantly or stop or change direction, it'd be a big freaking deal. If the English Midlands started getting winters like Winnipeg, Canada, that'd be a pretty big deal. While not a glacial period per se, it'd be worse than Europe's Little Ice Age, so I'm going to go ahead and call it what it is.