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Huge threat to humanity, the collapse of ocean currents

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Τεραστια απε&iota ;λιατηρωτα, καρ&epsilon υσν θασνρεμàτν /></p> <p><strong>The Atlantic current system is expected to change, simultaneously changing weather as we know it. Forever.</strong></p> <p>A vital Atlantic Ocean current system that affects weather around the world could collapse as early as the late 2030s, scientists say in a new study – a catastrophe on a planetary scale that would transform the weather and climate. Probably all over the world, as weather events are often interconnected.</p> <p>Several studies in recent years have suggested that the critical system – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC – could be on the verge of collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disturbed salinity caused by anthropogenic climate change.< /p> </p> <p>But the new research, which is under review and has yet to be published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could break down, suggesting that disruption could occur between 2037 and 2064. This research shows that it is very likely to collapse by 2050.</p> <p>“This is really worrying,” said Rene van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and co-author of the study.</p> <p>“All the negative side effects of human-caused climate change will continue to exist, such as more heat waves, more droughts, more floods,” he told CNN. “Then if we also have an AMOC collapse the climate will become even more distorted.”</p> <p>Water recycling cools the Southern Hemisphere and warms the North Atlantic</p> <p>Like a (airport) conveyor belt, the AMOC pulls warm surface water from the Southern Hemisphere and the tropics and distributes it into the cold North Atlantic. The cooler, saltier water then sinks and flows south. This mechanism prevents parts of the Southern Hemisphere from overheating and parts of the Northern Hemisphere from freezing, while distributing life-sustaining nutrients to marine ecosystems.</p> <p>The effects of an AMOC collapse would be “catastrophic.” In the decades after the collapse, the Arctic ice would begin to creep south, and after 100 years it would reach as far as the southern coast of England. Europe's average temperature would plummet, as would North America's – including parts of the US. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal of its seasons – the current dry season would become the rainy months and vice versa.</p> <p>An AMOC collapse “is a really big risk that we have to do everything we can to avoid,” said Stefan Ramstorf, a physical oceanographer at the University of Potsdam in Germany, who was not involved in the latest research. Nevertheless, we end up experiencing an unprecedented greenwashing.</p> <p>To reach their conclusions, the scientists from Utrecht used state-of-the-art models and for the first time identified an area of ​​the South Atlantic Ocean as the best place to monitor changes in circulation and use observational data. There they looked at ocean temperatures and salinity to confirm earlier predictions about when the AMOC might reach its tipping point.</p> <p>We're staring disaster in the face and yet doing nothing</p> <p> < p>The emphasis on ocean research at the time of the collapse is a relatively new development, Ramstorff said. But it does show how far scientists' understanding of the weakening of the AMOC has come. “Up until a few years ago, we were talking about whether it would happen at all, as a kind of low-probability, high-impact risk,” he told CNN. “And now it seems much more likely than a few years ago that this will happen. Now people are starting to get closer to when it will happen.”</p> <p>Ramstorf said that about five years ago he would have agreed that an AMOC collapse this century was unlikely, although even a 10% risk is still to be unacceptably high “for a catastrophic impact of this magnitude”.</p> <p>“There are now five papers, basically, that suggest it could very well happen in this century, or even before mid-century,” Ramstorf said. “My overall estimate now is that the risk of us passing the tipping point in this century is probably even greater than 50%.” While advances in AMOC research have been rapid and models trying to predict its collapse have progressed at lightning speed, they are still not without problems.</p> <p>For example, the models do not take into account a critical factor in the collapse of the AMOC – the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Huge amounts of fresh water are breaking off from the ice sheet and flowing into the North Atlantic, disrupting one of the circulation's driving forces: salt. “We already have a huge influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic, which will completely disrupt the system,” Ramstorf said.</p> <p>This research gap means that predictions could underestimate how soon or quickly it will happen. a collapse, Ramstorff stated.</p> <p><noindex></p> <div class=Source: 24h.com.cy

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