Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/25/atlantic-ocean-circulation-at-weakest-in-a-millennium-say-scientists

Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists

Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

Fri 26 Feb 2021 12.06 GMTFirst published on Thu 25 Feb 2021 16.00 GMT

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data.

Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe.

Scientists predict that the AMOC will weaken further if global heating continues, and could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century, which could bring us close to a “tipping point” at which the system could become irrevocably unstable. A weakened Gulf Stream would also raise sea levels on the Atlantic coast of the US, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who co-authored the study published on Thursday in Nature Geoscience, told the Guardian that a weakening AMOC would increase the number and severity of storms hitting Britain, and bring more heatwaves to Europe.

He said the circulation had already slowed by about 15%, and the impacts were being seen. “In 20 to 30 years it is likely to weaken further, and that will inevitably influence our weather, so we would see an increase in storms and heatwaves in Europe, and sea level rises on the east coast of the US,” he said.

Rahmstorf and scientists from Maynooth University in Ireland and University College London in the UK concluded that the current weakening had not been seen over at least the last 1,000 years, after studying sediments, Greenland ice cores and other proxy data that revealed past weather patterns over that time. The AMOC has only been measured directly since 2004.
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[reader1]

1. Scary stuff

The ocean conveyor belt is essential for a stable climate, something sadly not usually discussed on corporate news. Melting of the glaciers, Greenland and the Arctic will soon dramatically weaken the conveyor belts and the word Hyper-cane will then be part of everyone vocabulary. That Cat 5 hurricane Dorian (max sustain wind 185; gust 220) which hovered over the Bahamas in 2019 for days will be the norm sooner than most people thinks. When such monster storm arrives in Florida, catastrophic flooding will occur which could have the potential of setting off thousands of sinkholes.

The tipping point is already here, since we have already lost the opportunity to reverse the melting of the north/south Poles and Greenland.