Climate warming may cause the collapse of a vital ocean current system this century, possibly as soon as 2025, unleashing climate chaos, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, bring warm, tropical waters north and cold water south, respectively, to control the climate.
The Guardian reported that Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global warming, and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021. The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050 if global carbon emissions are not reduced. Evidence from past collapses indicates changes in temperature of 10 degree celcius in a few decades, although 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," co-author Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics and stochastic models in biology at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science.
"It was not a result where we said: 'Oh, yeah, here we have it'. We were actually bewildered."
"There is still large uncertainty where the tipping point of the AMOC is, but the new study adds to the evidence that it is much closer than we thought just a few years ago," Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany told CNN.
"The scientific evidence now is that we can't even rule out crossing a tipping point already in the next decade or two."
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