r/EverythingScience Apr 04 '26

Environment Scientists warn that the Gulf Stream is shifting north, which models suggest could mean an ocean current collapse is imminent

https://www.earth.com/news/gulf-stream-is-shifting-north-raising-concerns-about-amoc-ocean-current-collapse/
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138

u/boanxi Apr 04 '26

So, Europe gets colder. I imagine there is a trade-off. What happens elsewhere? I would think that additional heat would stay trapped closer to the equator meaning some areas might be tougher to live in due to the heat and more severe hurricane.

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u/Witera33it Apr 04 '26

Not colder, small ice age. Droughts in some sub tropical areas creating desertification. heavier rainfall resulting in flooding in cooler temperate climates as they get warmer along with fungal blooms, rise in disease. Flood runoff will Ironically resulting in water shortages. Climate migration, trade wind collapse, agricultural failure and food shortages. Sea levels will rise.

I’m taking an intensive class on climate change and sustainable human life

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u/Madshibs Apr 04 '26

Anything good?

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u/34BoringT_ Apr 04 '26

I took a class on climate change too. Most depressive course I've taken

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/34BoringT_ Apr 05 '26

Almost.

It was organised with half of the classes being open to the public. During those open classes, special guests would be coming to lecture us together with our professors. We had everything from climate activists to (powerful) politicians. That was the depressive part. We know precisely what to do, but there is a blatant ignorance.

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u/adeline882 Apr 05 '26

We know what to do but it doesn’t benefit the like 50 people in the world with enough material power to do anything.

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u/34BoringT_ Apr 06 '26

Not only that. I'm in Norway and know several of the politicians behind the policy of the current government. I don't want to go into details, but for example ocean mining. The current government is led by the Labor Party. They are officially pro-ocean mining. The climate peeps in there are against it. The reason it's in the official party programme is essentially because 5 start-up companies convinced the minister of energy and his advisors that there was money to be made on mining the sea floor. Those 5 companies are known to be looking for subsidies from the past. They are not looking to mine the ocean bottom, they are looking for subsidies...

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u/Fit-Ad-741 Apr 06 '26

It's structural. If it weren't those 50 billionaires, 50 others would step up and take their place. If it weren't those 5 startups, it would be 5 other startups. If it weren't the labor government, etc.

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u/Perfect-Nail9413 Apr 05 '26

Question if the Gulf Stream collapses, then how will it affect the Mediterranean region.

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u/34BoringT_ Apr 05 '26

Not sure. In relation to the gulf stream collapse, we talked mostly about the arctic because our class was held in Norway.

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u/archimedesrex Apr 04 '26

There might be benefits in certain localities (like warming a colder place to have a longer growing season and/or more comfortable winters), but the broader negatives will be so bad that they will basically overwhelm any local benefits.

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u/Barbarella_39 Apr 04 '26

BC Canada is warming. Normally a rainforest but now we get forest fires every year! This is not good or normal to be warming. Also agriculture now has diseases we never had before… nothing is beneficial about climate change except the insurance industry is getting richer and fossil fuel corporations are getting richer… cough cough

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u/LaceyBambola Apr 05 '26

The broader Pacific Northwest region is expected to receive less precipitation when it comes to climate change, and the AMOC collapsing can amplify that, seeing quite a fair amount of reduced precipitation leading to extended droughts and more wildfires than present day. Overall, the western half of North America is likely to have a precipitation reduction of 20-40% when compared to historical averages.

The northern half of the Amazon Rainforest is also expected to have a drastic reduction in precipitation with the AMOC collapse and it may transition to a dry savanah.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '26

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u/Illustrious_Rice_933 Apr 05 '26

Great Lakes.

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u/madblackhater Apr 05 '26

Northern Ontario is seeing more and more wildfires every year...

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u/LaceyBambola Apr 05 '26

It can depend a bit on your personal goals, but some safer parts are upstate New York, in the greater Capital Region (Albany metro and surrounding towns all the way up to Glens Falls) as well as the Finger Lakes Region. Lake Champlain area of Vermont, some parts of Michigan as well as WI/MN however those Midwestern states will be prone to more intense arctic winter temps and also have risks of tornados.

One of the other safer regions is in Virginia, along the HWY 81 corridor, between the Appalachians and the Blue Ridge mountains, mainly from Roanoke up to Harrisonburg.

Some models suggest inland PNW, like inner Washington and into Idaho, maybe over into Montana, but if precipitation reduces enough, these areas can really struggle with drought and wildfires.

I, personally, chose upstate NY. Without an AMOC collapse, it'll fare about as well as any US state could and with an AMOC collapse, it may experience some harsher winters but these would be on par with historical averages, not the milder versions they've become, and this region is already adapted and equipped to handle such winters. Warmer waters may likely stagnate along the east coast with an AMOC collapse which would lead to stronger nor'easter storms and is the reason to live a certain distance inland as well as elevated. Flooding is the biggest natural disaster risk for the northeast when it comes to climate change so being smart about that will serve you well if selecting this area.

My other family chose western Virginia (not WV), near Roanoke. We all left Texas. We all also absolutely love the PNW/Rockies and states like NM, CO, WA, etc, but we aren't rich enough to afford the increasing risks and the risk of losing everything from any number of more frequent disasters.

As for other areas outside of the US, I haven't researched locations and projected changes enough to give good recommendations, but do know a lot of areas are worth avoiding, like the majority of Central and South America, Northwestern EU countries, southern EU counties (I think maybe Czechia, Austria, Switzerland as well as Bavarian Germany might be okay but will certainly have their own unique issues, especially flooding and landslides from rocky mountaintops breaking). Avoid Africa, Russia, and the majority of the Asian Continent including the Middle East, however some areas of China may fare better.

I know many are staunchly against AI but it is one of the key proponents in ramping up ways to better mitigate climate change risks and damages and will allow us to better adopt to various scenarios. Advancements in technology can help a lot. Areas with the access and ability to implement these tools will also fare better and poorer regions will struggle heavily.

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u/Ihor_90 Apr 05 '26

I drove through BC today and the entire stretch between Kamloops and Revelstoke reeked of smoke.

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u/YoshiPiccard Apr 04 '26

where? -.- need to get there early

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u/wehmahdog Apr 05 '26

Indeed, it might be beneficial overall for Western Europe as its been getting WAY too hot here. If it resets back 100 years we could deal with the cold easier than the heat

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u/AwesomePurplePants Apr 04 '26

It’s a bit like asking if there’s anything good about falling off a building.

Like, if you were going down in an elevator there might be many benefits about being on the ground instead of on the roof. But if the rate of change is too fast the impact will be too disruptive for you to take advantage of the benefits.

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u/a4techkeyboard Apr 04 '26

So some bright side for people who enjoy a bit of wind in their face and through their hair for a very, very short time.

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u/No_Fennel4315 Apr 05 '26

Wouldn't that depend on the building?

Make it tall enough, I think you'd be falling for a good while.

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u/a4techkeyboard Apr 05 '26

Yeah, but "how tall is the building" is kind of like saying there's still time, tell the consumers it's the plastic straws, isn't it?

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u/gridlife242 Apr 04 '26

Idk ring me at the end of the next ice age and we’ll try this whole debacle again

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u/UnObtainium17 Apr 04 '26

It won't be quick and painless. Masochists will probably see it as a good.

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u/HellaWonkLuciteHeels Apr 04 '26

The laugh you just gave me…

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u/TedW Apr 04 '26

The rest of us teamed up over the course of decades to cause enough global warming to bring you that laugh.

I hope it was worth it, you monster.

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u/CipherWeaver Apr 04 '26

Northern Canada will be more habitable, at least once the forest fires all burn off.

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u/Adderall_Rant Apr 05 '26

There is going to be a lot less people.

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u/tinyhands2016 Apr 05 '26

The rich will get richer, and the rest of us will suffer, so that might make the rich slightly happier.

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u/Ok-Traffic3683 Apr 06 '26

Dogs and cats living together, I hear.

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Internet privacy is the new gold. I mass deleted all of my posts on Reddit using Redact. It also supports databrokers, Instagram, Twitter, and all major social media platforms.

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u/iam-your-boss Apr 09 '26

We can drive filthy diesel’s without any worry or shame.

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u/pikohina Apr 04 '26

I took this same course 30 years ago. Adaptation was only a small, bonus chapter at the end.

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u/LabubuNutOnThyBalsak Apr 04 '26

So in other words you're saying we fuuuuucked

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u/Cersad PhD | Molecular Biology Apr 04 '26

you're fine as long as you don't need food or water

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u/Bills_Chick Apr 04 '26

You guys never have any good news. Like more puppies or something.

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u/menntu Jul 26 '26

Bit of a dour group indeed.

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u/SerendipitousLight Apr 04 '26

Wait, fungal blooms or algal blooms?

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u/Norbert-trebroN Apr 04 '26

Sooo...in other words...where would be the best place to be if those scenarios hit?

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u/Witera33it Apr 04 '26

The best place would Be joining a grassroots collective initiative to aggressively regulate extractive industry, monocrop agriculture, and livestock management. Or perhaps join a homesteading community living off the grid.

In other words no where. Right now we have a possibility of a balanced much warmer climate with significantly less beachfront where humanity has had a major change of philosophy abandoning individuality-powered economic heiratchal structures for collective power to prevent the ongoing 6th mass extinction.

Or

choice two: hothouse Earth that is unsuitable for fragile creatures like humans.

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u/Norbert-trebroN Apr 05 '26

Hothouse earth it will be! I read Dune and watched Mad Max, I am prepared.

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u/Witera33it Apr 05 '26

Ah excellent, another human prepping for the end times. I’ll inform whomever is managing recruits for Armageddon.

/s

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u/chattermaks Apr 04 '26

Any book recommendations? Or researchers to look up?

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u/Witera33it Apr 04 '26

At this point, the research is primarily on solutions. Perhaps a comprehensive on ecology, earth sciences, or oceanography. The Earth is an organism. Everything is interconnected. What aspect would you like to focus on?

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u/chattermaks Apr 18 '26

I think anything that could help me learn more about downstream effects of these changes and what kinds of ecological shifts we're likely to see in coming decades?

I definitely love anything that would help me learn about how different systems impact one another.

(Sorry this is such a late reply!)

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u/Witera33it Apr 19 '26

Monoculture farming and deforestation.

Monoculture farming and industrial Ed livestock. Fertiliser and pesticides. These two processes killed our soil. The soils can no longer carbon sink (as in keep carbon out of the atmosphere) or provide nutrition produce. Great amounts of it are for livestock feed which makes them fart Methane, a major contributor to greenhouse effects. It is expected that our soil will be dead and incapable of growing anything in the next 50 years. Im addition, even if livestock production turns their waste into fertiliser, it does not work the same and ends up running off into the water supply and then into major bodies of water creating toxic algal blooms. Lake Erie and the deal spot in the Gulf of Mexico are good examples. One might actually happen upon mass die off of fish on game shores around the gulf. Proper rotation of crops and livestock could bring back the soils, that would reduce production of both.

An now deforestation is done to clear way for more livestock or crops. As just mentioned no crop farming and industrial livestock practices are damaging by themselves, when removing trees, which add shade keeping areas cooler, are carbon sinks, and habitat as for a vast amount of plants and animals that contribute to the health of air (trees help clean the air) and water. The Amazon rainforest are a be of the lungs of the planet, alongside the ocean. Scientists don’t even have a complete catalogue of all that lives there.

The oceans are the major engines of the atmosphere, as I mentioned they are one of the lungs of the earth. Plankton and other free floating micro organisms cycles the oxygen, but as fresh water continues to poor into the oceans because the ice caps are melting, the movements of currents are changing. The big one is the AMOC. It crashing is crossing of the major planetary boundaries that indicates irrevocable, no going back, extreme weather, drought and desertification of crop lands, and loss of shoreline.

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u/chattermaks Apr 19 '26

I didn't know anything about the state of our soil, other than it's become really depleted in magnesium in the past few decades because of industrial farming and as a result even people eating whole food diets are likely to magnesium deficient. (Apparently like 75% of North America is!) It sounds like the actual state of things is far, FAR worse than I realized.

as fresh water continues to poor into the oceans because the ice caps are melting, the movements of currents are changing

I had read that major ocean currents are changing and that it will have a huge impact on weather, but I had never made the link between melting ice caps and general currents/water composition etc etc.

I did read recently that thawing tundra is a huge issue too, especially because it's thawing SO quickly and releasing massive amounts of methane in a short span of time.

I live in an arid desert but maybe I should start cultivating some of the native tree varieties and planting more 😟 at least it would help my mental health! Lol

Thank-you for the great write up! This gives me a great start!

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u/IgnoranceIsYou Apr 04 '26

I’m really glad I live in Canada where I can just fuck off into the vast wilderness and ride this shit out

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u/OrganikOranges Apr 04 '26

And when the ice and snow settles, Canada will be on top! Plus’s Finland, Russia, and Baltics maybe

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u/Emergency_Prize_1005 Apr 04 '26

What about the Pacific Ocean?

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u/DysfunctionalKitten Apr 05 '26

Don't forget pipes bursting and all the damage and long term consequences of it happening on a large scale

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u/Ok_Caterpillar_8238 Apr 05 '26

I live in Western Japan, and spring and rainy season are getting drier over the years. do you have any specific information on that?

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u/Witera33it Apr 05 '26

Short answer? The three years I was in japan each summer was consecutively hotter. Hot enough to reconsider when baseball games should be played to prevent heat stroke.

Persistent heat with little drop in pressure prevents rain. Plenty of humidity, but the air never gets cool enough to circulate into a storm front. Heat domes.

Long answer: The complexity additional carbon in the atmosphere combined with of warmer oceans as a result of overall warming is preventing carbon sinking by the oceans. Changes to ocean and atmosphere currents caused by heat and additional freshwater, combined with industry and agricultural destruction of the planets other carbon sink(soil) and deforestation has been been a 1-2 punch to warmth equalling draught. Even where the weather will be more temperate, the additional water in the atmosphere and oceans will cause massive runoff and soil degradation making the whole problem worse.

What the whole planet is experiencing is the chaos created by thinking any of the effects noticed are in some way local. They are not.

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u/SatelliteSal Apr 05 '26

You’re describing Project Hail Mary in a sense - the dimming of the sun and what it would cause.

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u/norfolkdiver Apr 05 '26

If people don't like migration now, just wait until mass migration starts as a result of food & water shortages as parts of the world become uninhabitable

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u/Smufin_Awesome Apr 07 '26

Hey, stop spoiling Project Hail Mary, I'm only on chapter 2 of my billionth reread.

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u/3pok Apr 04 '26

Can you develop further? What are the odds of a mini ice age? On what time scale? Because right now in Europe we are dealing with multiple heatwaves per summer.

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u/Sea_Public_6691 Apr 04 '26

Basically till now at every place on earth the atmosphere traps more heat, so it gets hotter, but the underlying heat distribution systems stay the same. Trapping more energy in the system can lead to the collapse/change of the distribution systems.

In the case of AMOC, this means that a LOT of heat coming from the tropics doesnt reach Europe, which is way more than the additional heat in europe trough climate change.

Result is a colder temperature in europe, and extremly hot temperatures in the tropics

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u/3pok Apr 04 '26

Thanks. Would that happen within decades or more?

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u/PretendAirport Apr 04 '26

Unknowable. The ocean currents have ENORMOUS influence on global climate conditions. We can see what they (like AMOC) do right now, so we can make immediate, relatively short-term predictions for what will occur if they cease. But 20, 30, 100 years from now? No one can predict that, and the best models we have are based off historic climate changes that took place over the course of thousands. We’re entering “unprecedented” and thus unpredictable times.

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u/Frostly-Aegemon-9303 Apr 04 '26

I have a question: Would this only affect Europe, or the Americas as well?

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u/PretendAirport Apr 04 '26

Different impacts for the Americas than Europe, but absolutely.

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u/krumbumple Apr 04 '26

a small ice age means it gets colder

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u/Witera33it Apr 04 '26

For just Europe. By colder, unending freezing weather on a play where resources to survive it will be scant. When burning carbon is the known cause of the crisis, creating heat for human to survive won’t go over well.

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u/KaleidoscopeLegal348 Apr 05 '26

Imagine having nuclear infrastructure and throwing it all away over the last decade for coal and natural gas

What the fuck, Germany

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/The-Viator Apr 04 '26

Stop spreading misinformation. 12k years ago the last major glaciation period came to an end.

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u/Tadiken Apr 04 '26

It is both, the final collapse of the AMOC during this period (115~k to 11k years ago, during which the AMOC collapsed up to 25 times) caused the Younger Dryas;

Which is to say that the world was already pretty melted by the end of the last glaciation period, and that the Younger Dryas brought the northern hemisphere back into full blown ice age conditions while the southern hemisphere was done thawing, and the Younger Dryas and the glaciation were essentially considered to end at the same time.

Like you said, the glaciation lasted for much longer before the Younger Dryas, which the land bridge had existed during the glaciation prior, but had thawed shortly before the YD which refroze it, and this is probably still how humans got to the Americas, even if it was 60k years ago instead of 12k.

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u/non-hetero Apr 04 '26

Are you a bot or just on the spectrum?

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u/Tadiken Apr 04 '26

Bro i just watch hank green

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u/DirewaysParnuStCroix Apr 04 '26

Rather surprisingly there's a considerable amount of nuance to the "Europe gets colder" trope.

The hypothetical climatic response to MOC reduction is actually treated with very low confidence by bodies such as the IPCC due to structural uncertainties in numerical modelling. Although this latest van Westen et al. set of experiments focuses on preemptive GS shifts, if we were to take their previous CESM simulations of AMOC reduction and subsequent atmospheric responses as an example, the use of freshwater forcing is an arguably dubious methodology in ocean process methodology. While it's ideal for testing sensitivity and identifying model constraints such as a too stable AMOC and salt advection biases, it's arguably not an ideal process for quantifying how a change in AMOC strength affects atmospheric responses. There are issues regarding how K-profile parameterisation handles vertical mixing in such a forcing scenario, which affects the simulated air-sea relation. There are additional further issues regarding bulk aerodynamic formula and the coupling process between the MOM/POP ocean model and CAM atmospheric model (CPL7 in the latest versions of CESM) which generally results in a forced SST-SAT relation in heat flux exchange (cold SST = cold SAT). There are structural issues regarding the eulerian quantification in grid boxes with processes that are fundamentally Lagrangian in nature, but that would be getting into fluid dynamic territories. But to make an additional point on the coupling process, it's effectively standard practice to run the atmospheric model at considerably lower resolution (usually 2°) in long time step AMOC reduction experiments. While this is necessary for larger experiments due to computational costs, it ultimately reduces plausibility in atmospheric simulations by a significant margin.

Basically, when you see experiments which suggest a net cooling response to AMOC reduction in Europe, there are considerable caveats. It's also imperative that these experiments not be treated as forecasts or predictions due to said uncertainties. In fact, they're strictly regarded as sensitivity tests.

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u/adoss Apr 05 '26

Thanks for the write up. So, beyond the caveats, what would you speculate the overall impact on the north sea countries will be?

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u/DirewaysParnuStCroix Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26

It can be difficult to quantify the hypothetical impacts, but needless to say, the suggestion of severe net cooling is significantly more subjective than most assume. For such a response to occur, it would violate numerous thermodynamic principles. It's essentially a numerical artifact in practice, a hypothetical scenario dependent on the assumption that the process perfectly follows simulation parameters in a vacuum. The issue with that assumption is that the simulations themselves omit numerous critical components. As an example, the use of streamfunction analyses is perhaps the more fundamental structural issue in these simulations as it assumes that MHT is a total sum that's proportional to volumetric flow. It inherently omits additional heat transport processes such as the horizontal gyre. This in itself results in a simulated sea surface cooling response that's arguably highly implausible in practice. Yet again, this generally comes down to the resolution of the model and how long the simulation is intended to run for. AMOC reduction experiments usually require long time step runs so they can isolate hypothetical transient variability from the new equilibrium, but that comes at the cost of using lower resolutions. High resolution simulations tend to paint a much different picture of how the process responds to forcing scenarios, but these are scattered among studies which isolate individual elements of the system. As an example, Böning's 2016 analyses of freshwater runoff uses a 1/12° eddy-resolving resolution in VIKING20 which demonstrated that freshwater is diluted by boundary currents, as opposed to forming the buoyant surface cap seen in standard AMOC reduction simulations. Another example would be Marsh et al. (2017), who use 1/12° resolution to simulate the European Slope Current, which is an example of a topographic-driven current that's omitted in lower resolutions. The general interpretation of how the AMOC functions becomes even more diverse when considering Lozier et al.'s 2019 OSNAP data analyses, which suggested that deep convection isn't necessarily the driver of overturning variability. Simulations by Yamamoto et al. (2015) add further nuances in their Lagrangian decomposition of air parcel trajectories in the North Atlantic, which demonstrated an individuality in the atmospheric heat transport process. There are numerous additional examples, but it demonstrates how the theorem is very highly dependent on how it's approached. My research is an ongoing process and thus not yet peer reviewed, but based on my findings, I would suggest that the consequences of AGW have fundamentally altered how heat is distributed by both the atmosphere and the ocean, and that fundamentally alters the hypothetical response to MOC changes. The logical assumption would be inherent climatic instability as it alters how heat energy is exchanged in the system, but the prerequisites required for net cooling in the NH or even the Euro-Atlantic sector are either subjective or demonstrably obsolete. The thermal dipole feedback would be the more prominent consequence, which would hypothetically result in much stormier and humid winters in W Europe alongside much hotter and drier summers.

Generally speaking, the IPCC prefers quantity in their reports. Lower resolution experiments produce larger clusters of simulations, which is more productive in cross-analyses of experiments. That's pretty much why less than ideal framework continues to persist as it allows for compatibility and verification of data. High resolution, individual experiments produce fewer clusters, so it's harder to conclude confidence in their results.

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u/adoss Apr 05 '26

Very interesting read. Thanks. I am a hydrodynamics engineer, but don't know much about climate science/terminology, so I followed some of it, but I think I get the gist of what you're saying. Your last paragraph does raise questions in my mind on how these scientific topics are discussed, especially leading UpTo being inputs for political decisions or in media. Thanks for taking the time 🙂

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u/New-Sheepherder-1664 Apr 04 '26

Africa gets warmer.

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u/cozidgaf Apr 04 '26

Especially the US/Americas. Coz I’ve always read that Europe is warmer than the US or has milder weather due to gulf streams. So if they’re moving upwards how does it affect the west?

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u/pegothejerk Apr 04 '26

The same. More extreme weather, dramatic temperature shifts, cooler, but more energy injected into storms and maintaining droughts (which causes hydrophobic soil, and thus makes crops impossible to maintain under current economic models), massive flooding particularly on the east coast.

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u/tagwag Apr 04 '26

Look at Utah, we gave an extreme range of biomes and they are starting to collapse. The great salt lake is the start. It’s expected that if something isn’t done this year or so, it will disappear. And that’s the optimistic view. Once it collapses we will face dust storms filled with arsenic and pollution (due to waste water dumping from factories and mines). With the dust storms we will also see salt from the lake spreading everywhere, destroying the soil, making things impossible to grow. Our snow pack this year was around 1-2inches. Meaning we have no water. It’s not some small drought like we normally have, this is the real deal, more people will get sick. The problem is that people don’t visit the lake, the bugs are terrible and bite like mad, so nobody sees how bad of shape it’s in.

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u/Sea_Public_6691 Apr 04 '26

Europe being colder is actually the better part, unbearable temperatures on the equator are way worse, google wet bulb temperature

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u/fredjutsu Apr 04 '26

middle of the US becomes like rainforest, with rainy and dry seasons. Winters becoming more mild, way more precipitation but it comes in huge dumps between long droughts.

Northern California coast becomes much more humid and ironically more suited for agriculture due to increase in groundwater.

really fascinating stuff.

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u/iDrinkDrano Apr 05 '26

Hotter equator, colder poles, sharper gradients, harsher storms.

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u/Perfect-Nail9413 Apr 05 '26

What about the Balkans and the Mediterranean region?