Science
Experts Issue Dire Warning: Gulf Stream Shutdown May Be Just Decades Away—With Catastrophic Global Fallout
Right now, the world is a frightening place for more reasons than just the fact that missiles are falling from the sky and everyone is watching to see who will hit their big red button first.
Despite worries that we may be wiped out by artificial intelligence, that we will be blasted to oblivion in World War III, and that we may be killed by asteroids that destroy cities, the state of the world as a whole keeps some of us up at night.
There are currently concerns that the Gulf Stream may be on the verge of collapsing and bringing with it catastrophic calamity, as sinking towns and other places have been characterised as “sitting ducks” in the face of natural disasters.
The Gulf Stream, also referred to as “the conveyor belt of the ocean,” is but a tiny part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is much larger. By moving warm, salty water from the tropical ocean’s surface up into the northern hemisphere, the AMOC aids in temperature regulation throughout Europe and the USA.
Although we may be experiencing record-breaking heatwaves right now, scientists have warned that the Gulf Stream has been waning for the past century and that its collapse might send Europe into a “deep freeze.”
Scientists from the University of California claim that temperatures in Europe could drop to as low as -22°F. According to study author Professor Wei Liu: “This work shows the AMOC has been weakening for more than a century. That trend is likely to continue if greenhouse gases keep rising.”
Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the study is titled “Weakened Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation causes the historical North Atlantic Warming Hole”.
Scientists identify a 1,000-mile-wide area of frigid water south of Iceland and Greenland. For more than a century, this’stubborn’ area of cool water has had to withstand global warming.
Liu continued, “People have been asking why this cold spot exists; we found the most likely answer is a weakening AMOC.”
Cooler and fresher water results from the AMOC slowing down because less salt enters the North Atlantic.
The team reconstructed circulation system changes for around 100 distinct climate models in order to test the long-term salinity and temperature records. Only models with a weaker Gulf Stream were able to replicate the cold blob and match the actual data.
“If you look at the observations and compare them with all the simulations, only the weakened-AMOC scenario reproduces the cooling in this one region,” Liu continued, referring to the “very robust correlation.”
Thanks to Liu and the colleagues, it appears that a weakening AMOC is the origin of the patch, which some climate experts previously attributed to aerosol pollution.
Foreshadowing a grim future, he concluded, “The overall impact on ecosystems and weather patterns, both in the Arctic and globally, could still be severe.”
Speaking to MailOnline, climate scientist Professor David Thornalley suggested that the climate in the United Kingdom could end up being similar to Scandinavia: “Unfortunately people would die due to stronger winter storms and flooding, and many old and young would be vulnerable to the very cold winter temperatures.”
Furthermore, the global tropical rainfall belt would move as a result of an AMOC collapse, resulting in drought, starvation, and flooding “in countries that are already struggling to deal with these issues.”
One more catastrophic concern to piling on to the list.
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