Is the AMOC one of the planet’s most vulnerable tipping points?
Could climate change interrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — the system of currents that circulates water within the Atlantic Ocean — and bring about a new ice-age? A recent study suggests this tipping point may be closer than previously thought.
When a recent study, published in Nature Communications, suggested that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) was closer to a crucial tipping point than previously thought, images of the 2004 Hollywood Blockbuster movie The Day After Tomorrow — where a rapid melting of polar ice, caused by global warming, alters ocean currents, interrupts the Gulf Stream and leads to a new ice age in a matter of hours — abounded in media reports.
Although the scale and swiftness of the disaster shown in the film represents a laughably unrealistic scenario that was challenged by sceintists, what the computer generated images and special effects did manage to convey was the existence of a tipping point connected to sea currents in the Atlantic Ocean.
A concept that the recent Nature Communications’ study brought back into the limelight by suggesting that radical change to our climate may be a lot closer than previously thought and that global warming is pushing us towards yet another critical tipping point.
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Climate Foresight is published by the CMCC Foundation , a research center that develops models and predictions to study the interaction between changes in the climate system and social, economic and environmental changes. Climate Foresight is an observatory on tomorrow, a digital magazine that collects ideas, interviews, articles, art performances, and multimedia to tell the stories of the future.
