Computer Simulations of Atlantic Ocean Currents Finds Collapse Could Happen in Our Lifetime (apnews.com) 128
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a "cliff-like" tipping point looming in the future. A long-worried nightmare scenario, triggered by Greenland's ice sheet melting from global warming, still is at least decades away if not longer, but maybe not the centuries that it once seemed, a new study in Friday's Science Advances finds.
The study, the first to use complex simulations and include multiple factors, uses a key measurement to track the strength of vital overall ocean circulation, which is slowing. A collapse of the current — called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC — would change weather worldwide because it means a shutdown of one of key the climate and ocean forces of the planet. It would plunge northwestern European temperatures by 9 to 27 degrees (5 to 15 degrees Celsius) over the decades, extend Arctic ice much farther south, turn up the heat even more in the Southern Hemisphere, change global rainfall patterns and disrupt the Amazon, the study said. Other scientists said it would be a catastrophe that could cause worldwide food and water shortages.
"We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we we're not sure how much closer," said study lead author Rene van Westen, a climate scientist and oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We are heading towards a tipping point." When this global weather calamity — grossly fictionalized in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" — may happen is "the million-dollar question, which we unfortunately can't answer at the moment," van Westen said. He said it's likely a century away but still could happen in his lifetime. He just turned 30.
"It also depends on the rate of climate change we are inducing as humanity," van Westen said.
The study, the first to use complex simulations and include multiple factors, uses a key measurement to track the strength of vital overall ocean circulation, which is slowing. A collapse of the current — called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC — would change weather worldwide because it means a shutdown of one of key the climate and ocean forces of the planet. It would plunge northwestern European temperatures by 9 to 27 degrees (5 to 15 degrees Celsius) over the decades, extend Arctic ice much farther south, turn up the heat even more in the Southern Hemisphere, change global rainfall patterns and disrupt the Amazon, the study said. Other scientists said it would be a catastrophe that could cause worldwide food and water shortages.
"We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we we're not sure how much closer," said study lead author Rene van Westen, a climate scientist and oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "We are heading towards a tipping point." When this global weather calamity — grossly fictionalized in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" — may happen is "the million-dollar question, which we unfortunately can't answer at the moment," van Westen said. He said it's likely a century away but still could happen in his lifetime. He just turned 30.
"It also depends on the rate of climate change we are inducing as humanity," van Westen said.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The Arctic is warming up disproportionately fast.
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It seems that the disparate warming of the poles will reduce the temperature gradient with the equator.
I wonder what happens when temperature gradients get smaller.
I wonder if we could build a few computer simulations about that.
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"The final nails in the coffin was Climate Gate, the mere idea that so called scientists were caught making shit up to get funding"
what shit did they make up?
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The heating of the equatorial ocean and the cooling of the Arctic Ocean (regardless of salinity) will naturally introduce convection between the two
Convection currents are driven by weight, not temperature. In most cases, when you are looking at the same mix of fluid at different temperatures, this is the same thing. If you have cold brackish water meeting warm salty water of the same overall density, it will slow down currents as there is no weight difference to drive them.
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It's collapse.
i.e. To break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Gosh, that is the most trolling post I ever read! You sick troll! You trolling troll! It is going to be cataclysm and like every other Inconvenient Truth claim, is a scientific fact. It is a foregone conclusion! Anyone who does not see that is a troll, and I hereby expel noxious Taco Bell fueled gas in your direction. Go troll somewhere else! Troll!
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to coll (Score:5, Insightful)
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The problem is risk tolerance. The consequences of the simulation being wrong are low. The consequences of the current collapsing are high. So, we have to be much more risk-averse for the current.
Humans are SO bad at evaluating risk. Handing the job over to AI could hardly be any worse.
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Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:1)
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:3)
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it's okay to save the planet
people think the ecosystem is made from glass. i bet we couldnt sterilize this planet even if we were actually trying to.
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:2)
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where have you got this idea from, that theres some kind of optimum? the amount of times humans thought they understood what the planet "needed" but ended up making it objectively worse
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:2)
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There always is. We don't always know what it is, but it always exists.
on what axioms?
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:2)
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planetary fitness
im glad you said it, because now I can ask what exactly that is. I mean just vaguely; high level stuff... I know youre not a climate scientist but give it a go
Re: The computer simulation is more likely to col (Score:2)
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I think Europe getting frozen would upset your financial markets a tiny bit more.
Re: Consequences not Low (Score:2)
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Re: 5 miles of ice (Score:3)
Re: 5 miles of ice (Score:2)
Highrise buildings would install pipes under the roof surface & pump warm water through to warm the roof surface enough to melt the snow & drain the water away.
The thick glaciers from last time happened mostly because nobody even tried removing snow & ice, so it just slowly built up over thousands of years.
Colder winters in Canadian big cities are kind of like hotter summers in Miami... meh, because it's just more of the same stuff we already have infrastructure to deal with. It would suck more
On the plus side (Score:2)
Re:On the plus side (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be a repeat of the 8200 year event. A couple hundred years, not thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Younger Dryas lasted about 1200 years, still not multiple thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Slight problem (Score:4, Insightful)
To get it to collapse they added 5 times as much freshwater as is contained in the Greenland ice cap. Enquiring minds would like to know where this has come from.
fyi the current has strengthened in the past decade
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Turns out that would also be all the other ice in existence. If so the change in sea level height, 60+m, would be far more important than anything to do with a current that may or may not stop. At current rates of melting all this is thousands of years away.
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Simulations come with huge error margins. This is not a certainty, this is risk estimation. If you ignore enough risks, something will kill you.
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If you ignore enough risks, something will kill you.
then live a little
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That can be done stupidly or not so stupidly. Also, risk management does in no way mean to live in fear. That would be _failed_ risk management. About as failed as just looking away.
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To get it to collapse they added 5 times as much freshwater as is contained in the Greenland ice cap. Enquiring minds would like to know where this has come from.
I wouldn't take much comfort in that for the reasons stated in the update at the end of this blog post [realclimate.org].
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To get it to collapse they added 5 times as much freshwater as is contained in the Greenland ice cap. Enquiring minds would like to know where this has come from.
I guess it wouldn't be an issue if Greenland was the only source of melting freshwater. There is also a lot of melting ice in the Arctic. Until fairly recently, it was possible to walk from Canada to Russia across the pole. This is being broken up and thawed by shipping and the activity of roughly 100 military submarines conducting maneuvers there each day.
Breaking up the Arctic ice shelf contributes to melting of glaciers on land in the Northern Hemisphere. And counting only Greenland, or even the Arcti
lol (Score:1)
and thr movie (Score:3)
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Hopfully better than the movie which was too unbelievable.
Did sim account for the giant space umbrella? (Score:1)
I read that a giant space umbrella can be used to counter warming.
We should get on that right away.
Problem Solved (Score:1)
All those thermometers recording dropping temperatures are sure to lower the global average temperature.
Good work people, problem solved. We can go back to improving our lives by utilizing safe, convenient, and inexpensive hydrocarbon fuels.
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Did It? (Score:1)
This would have happened during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, if the hypothesis were correct, right?
So did it?
Since the Romans had vineyards in Britain and the Europeans wrote about the Medieval Warm Period, it would seem like 'no'.
Re:Did It? (Score:5, Informative)
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I read somehwere that those warm periods were either conspiracy theories on the part of Big Oil (TM) or measurement anomolies/errors introduced by students not using the equipment right so the data needs "correcting". ;)
oblig dilbert perhaps (Score:3)
Before we panic (Score:5, Interesting)
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Makes sense to me. But I say we panic anyway. Just to stay in practice.
Re:Before we panic (Score:5, Insightful)
There's not enough information. We'd need the experiment replicated and the models validated.
But this isn't a proper science article. It's more like a newspaper article. There isn't any published data, not even charts. Was there nothing published since 2006?
There's also an 'It's the wind coming from the sea, it's not the wind coming from the sea' argument. What they're actually examining is whether ENSO is significant compared to the larger scheme of milder weather due to being within eg 75 miles of the sea.
Furthermore, they don't provide any evidence for their alternate hypothesis.
On its own, it's quite weak from a science point of view.
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Wow, that's bad. The new paper largely confirms it. The 2014 paper cited by it is in accord with what you say: https://os.copernicus.org/arti... [copernicus.org]
Here's the new paper: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Now, being in Nature, you'd expect significant peer review. And in a couple of months, we'll see if there are serious challenges to the imprecise conclusion. But I'd hope we get some more instruments in the sea, sharpish. We could double the sensors for under $1m but really we should spend at least $10m dot
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On its own, it's quite weak from a science point of view.
That's not the view of the relevant scientists (i.e., climatologists). See this blog post [realclimate.org].
Re: Before we panic (Score:2)
There is nothing published because the paper is just academic papermill filler. The author just recently got his PhD and is some random dude working a postdoc. He is trying to create a name for himself, so he is essentially climate disaster novelist, trying to see what sticks with the media.
The amount of academic papers that have been quote peer reviewed unquote has skyrocketed in recent years especially in climate science and environmental biology, and most of them have been criticized for fabricating clai
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I live in Europe, unless I'm in Thailand.
No, the article makes no sense.
The warm climate *and* the heavy snow fall in winter (we lack winters at the moment), are due to the golf stream.
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(we lack winters at the moment)
no we absolutely do not. come to england where its shit cold weather 365 and tell me about global warming.
What is the planet telling us? (Score:2)
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Overpopulation _will_ get fixed. The only question is how much input the human race has on the process.
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like climate change then
Refilling Aral sea and increasing salinity (Score:3)
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Maybe they could get China to come in and do it since it's doubtful Russia could find the men, equipment, or funding at this point. There's no chance of that backfiring... ;)
You've gone and blown it! (Score:2)
You've gone and blown it with this:
> still is at least decades away if not longer ...that means we won't do anything about it at all until you can say "it'll happen in the next 2 years" - and even then only if there's no election between then and now.
Whose lifetime? (Score:2)
This phrase is so fundamentally bad. My dad's lifetime? (He is 84 this year) My kid's lifetime? The only way this could be valid is if it happened today.
How global trolling works (Score:1)
Climate skeptics would then say, "See, we got colder! Warming is fake news!" Sure, one could show them the AMOC prediction from earlier, but they wouldn't share it with their target audience.
Could (Score:2)
There needs to be a special journal dedicated to the science of Couldology.
Soylent Green (Score:2)
Soylent Green will be People, it seems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Current (Score:1)
We can't model a cup of coffee let alone an ocean (Score:1)
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"We'll just shift to other continents"
That's a well-established European tradition but they don't want you now any more than they wanted you then
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It's a well established human tradition.
9000 years ago as the Sahara dried up, all the humans moved to the Nile Valley.
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who did they conquer, displace or eradicate?
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The Nubians, who were pushed upstream. But not before the new Egyptians learned how to build pyramids from them.
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Eventually, sure, solar energy input will force circulation. But in time to prevent a mass die-off of sea life, absolutely not. A large dose of counterflow or blocking action can very much stall the circulation for a significant number of years.
Of course, if we've already wiped out all sea life beforehand, I guess there's nothing to worry about other than some more climatic changes.
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Eventually, sure, solar energy input will force circulation.
No worries. It won't have to start from scratch.
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The circulation can't stop for even a month, it's impossible. No, there is nothing strong enough to counter the sun forcing circulation as it always has, the fluids must circulate. Any model with stoppage in it is ridiculous and in violation of basic thermodynamics and fluid flow.
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Of course, if we've already wiped out all sea life beforehand, I guess there's nothing to worry about other than some more climatic changes.
The air you breathe is made breathable by microbial life in the oceans. If we kill them off, we kill all multicellular life. It will take a while, trees and grasses will be working overtime, but it will happen.
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Of course, if we've already wiped out all sea life beforehand
the planets been through way worse and it ended up producing intelligent life... i bet youd save endangered species as well - i love cats, and id be sad to see the last lion or tiger die, but its life. life isnt in stasis
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Just as gulf stream collapse has been utterly debunked by actual physicists so it is impossible for ocean conveyor to stop. Solar energy input will cause circulation in fluid, there is no way for it not too.
Because physicists are the best at figuring out climate.
They can't even figure out gravity or how magnets work. Bitches don't know!
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But we're not talking about climates when discussing gulf stream or ocean conveyor, it's two things much simpler. The sun forcing them won't stop, and there is nothing to counter the flow. It's very basic heating of a fluid and convections.
That's reality, stop believing agenda driven doom mongers that want to stop progress and civilization.
When they can tell me how magnets work, I might listen to them.
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magnetism is easy, it's just a moving electric field. Attraction or repulsion is just exchange of vibrations in the electric field that change momentum of charged objects, the vibrations are called photons.
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magnetism is easy, it's just a moving electric field. Attraction or repulsion is just exchange of vibrations in the electric field that change momentum of charged objects, the vibrations are called photons.
Its... a pop culture reference... "Magnets, magnets, how do they work? Bitches don't know!"
Re:Physical impossibility (Score:5, Insightful)
*Citation needed.
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let's start with the Gulf Stream. Actual physicist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
citation needed only for the ignorant of very basic principles, neither the gulf stream nor ocean conveyor can stop, for exactly the same reasons. It's impossible.
Re:Physical impossibility (Score:4, Informative)
citation needed only for the ignorant of very basic principles, neither the gulf stream nor ocean conveyor can stop, for exactly the same reasons. It's impossible.
Well, let's see what's happened in the past shall we? (First source [theguardian.com] mentioning it...) "Although climate records suggest that the current has ground to a halt in the distant past..." Hmm, there seems to be some disagreement here.
However, skipping over this, given that the described outcome of this event is a much colder Europe, are there any other ways this might happen due to changes in the Gulf Stream (meh, the AMOC)? "The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe." It would appear so. Obviously there's a difference between a cessation of the current and the redirection of the current, but in terms of specific regional climate changes the two might turn out to be equivalent.
Still, that was a good video by Sabine, and I tend to agree that 'concerns' over the AMOC tend towards the hyperbolic, but I would remind you that things are rarely binary 'either / or'. Third, or more, options usually exist, whether people can see past the false dichotomy or not.
Possible and may have Happened Before (Score:5, Informative)
Just as gulf stream collapse has been utterly debunked by actual physicists so it is impossible for ocean conveyor to stop.
As a physicist myself I do not see why physics prevents the shutdown of the gulf stream. While solar heating will induce currents the amount of heating, positions of the land masses, salinity etc. all affect the direction and strength of the current. For example, suppose the gulf stream simply diverts south returning to the equatorial regions instead of branching up north and going past the UK and Norway? The current is still there and circulating only the direction has shifted.
Not only is there nothing in physics to prevent that but that current was believed to have weakened naturally before ~1300--1700 causing what what known in Euope as the "little ice age"..
Re: Possible and may have Happened Before (Score:3)
There's also quite a bit of evidence that "the little ice age" was *actually* the natural start of the next/current glacial period, and it was only the arrival of the industrial revolution & rapid increase in fossil-fuel combustion that paused, then slowly reversed, the cooling.
Regardless, "the next ice age" (glaciation) will be nothing like the past, because this time around humans will interfere with it... indirectly, if not directly. Snow gets removed from urban areas & never really gets a footho
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Re: Possible and may have Happened Before (Score:2)
The main advantage of using nuclear waste heat in canals vs burning fossil fuel is that it won't cause an even bigger problem 20,000-60,000 years later when it starts to warm up again.
By that point, humanity might actually decide to deliberately freeze and lock up glacial ice just to ensure that it stays put in Greenland, Siberia, and northern Canada instead of melting & running into the sea. Kind of like how some buildings in Alaska that are sitting on permafrost have refrigerated foundations to *keep
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it won't cause an even bigger problem 20,000-60,000 years later when it starts to warm up again.
Neither would a controlled release of greenhouse gases. CO2 is removed from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. The build-up in the atmosphere currently is just because we are releasing far more than these mechanisms can cope with. Were we able to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow CO2 levels would immediately start to drop and, while it may take a few decades or centuries the level will gradually return to the equilibrium value. On a timescale of tens of thousands of years, it would be very easy to reduce
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Solar energy will cause circulation. However, whether that will induce a current the size of the Gulf Stream is a different question entirely. Your reasoning is above reproach in the same way a brick is above the Sargasso Sea (to reuse a Douglas Adam's phrase).
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The Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMOC) are distinct: the Gulf Stream is driven by wind stress; the AMOC by density differences. The AMOC is also far more important than the Gulf Stream for climate. See this blog post [realclimate.org] by an actual climatologist.
It can stop -- and has in the past.
Re:Yet Again (Score:4, Funny)
So how would you fund simulations? Have those nice gents in the petrol industry fund them? Put them in gov. institutions? Those institutions now run on grants as well, that's part of their funding process. An agency has a budget but the researchers must compete for it and winning means getting a grant to do the research. Maybe you could do a simulation in your spare time, yes? Shouldn't take you, what, an afternoon?
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The nice gents in the petrol industry already funded theirs and got the answer.
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Yup, he destroys everything he touches. Every "business" he is/was ever in always has the stench of corruption about it. In the NYS fraud trial, the judge put in a former judge as overseer for his "business". She recently reported his "organization" was continuing the shady dealing and accounting. At first I wonder how he could be so stupid. Then I realized, (a) he doesn't run his "organization", (b) he built the "organization" in his image. They simply do not know HOW to run an unshady business.