AMOC To Collapse Scam Is Back
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
It’s the usual scam:
The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a tipping point that is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”, a study has found.
The scientists behind the research said they were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the point is reached, although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen.
Using computer models and past data, the researchers developed an early warning indicator for the breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that is a key component in global climate regulation.
They found Amoc is already on track towards an abrupt shift, which has not happened for more than 10,000 years and would have dire implications for large parts of the world.
Amoc, which encompasses part of the Gulf Stream and other powerful currents, is a marine conveyer belt that carries heat, carbon and nutrients from the tropics towards the Arctic Circle, where it cools and sinks into the deep ocean. This churning helps to distribute energy around the Earth and modulates the impact of human-caused global heating.
But the system is being eroded by the faster-than-expected melt-off of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets, which pours freshwater into the sea and obstructs the sinking of saltier, warmer water from the south.
Amoc has declined 15% since 1950 and is in its weakest state in more than a millennium, according to previous research that prompted speculation about an approaching collapse.
Until now there has been no consensus about how severe this will be. One study last year, based on changes in sea surface temperatures, suggested the tipping point could happen between 2025 and 2095. However, the UK Met Office said large, rapid changes in Amoc were “very unlikely” in the 21st century.
The new paper, published in Science Advances, has broken new ground by looking for warning signs in the salinity levels at the southern extent of the Atlantic Ocean between Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Simulating changes over a period of 2,000 years on computer models of the global climate, it found a slow decline can lead to a sudden collapse over less than 100 years, with calamitous consequences.
The paper said the results provided a “clear answer” about whether such an abrupt shift was possible: “This is bad news for the climate system and humanity as up till now one could think that Amoc tipping was only a theoretical concept and tipping would disappear as soon as the full climate system, with all its additional feedbacks, was considered.”
As with a lot of climate scams, this one is based on just a few years data, from which the “scientists” conclude that they have identified cataclysmic changes that have not happened for millennia.
The Met Office give a more balanced summary:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/oceans/amoc
Not this particular sentence:
Oceanographers have been measuring the AMOC continuously since 2004. The measurements have shown that the AMOC varies from year to year, and it is likely that these variations have an impact on the weather in the UK. However it is too early to say for sure whether there are any long term trends. Before 2004 the AMOC was only measured a few times,
So we only have data since 2004, and the year to year variations are large. To pretend that such a short series is in any way significant is not only unscientific but fraudulent.
This is what the series shows:
It would appear that there is little trend since around 2008.
The idea that the AMOC never changed before 2004 is absurd anyway.
Bob Dickson & Svein Østerhus laid out in their study, “One hundred years in the Norwegian Sea”, the major climatic changes in the Norwegian Sea and the rest of the Arctic:
All were associated with changes in Atlantic currents and the AMOC. The Warming in the North, for instance, occurred because of the influx of warm Atlantic seawater, in exactly the same way as with recent Arctic warming. As the Met Office explain, warm water evaporates leaving saltier water, which sinks because it is more dense. Saltier water of course freezes at lower temperatures, so Arctic sea ice tends to contract. (Note when it freezes, the salt tends to leech out, so either way the sea becomes saltier).
The Great Salinity Anomaly which followed the Warming was the result of that influx of warmer water retreating, in part because of northerly airflow :
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00291950701409256
These weather patterns are part and parcel of the Arctic Oscillation, another perfectly natural cycle. The anomalously higher pressure over Greenland marks the time of the negative AO:
From NSIDC:
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/icelights/2012/02/arctic-oscillation-winter-storms-and-sea-ice
As fresh, polar water replaced warmer Atlantic water, salinity levels fell – hence the name given to the event. Just as Arctic sea ice had retreated during the Warming, it expanded rapidly during this period. The GSA was not just a phenomenon in the Norwegian Sea, because the polar gyre carried this fresh water around the whole of the Arctic Ocean.
Another factor identified by Dickson and Osterhus in the freshening of the Arctic Ocean is increasing discharge from Eurasian rivers into the basin. A warming climate means a wetter climate in those regions. And more river discharge leads to more sea ice and a colder Arctic.
In other words, these processes tend to be self correcting. Milder weather leads eventually to more sea ice and a colder climate, until eventually the AO flips back to positive again.
I’ll leave the final comment to Dickson & Osterhus:
All these changes were the result of natural processes. There is no evidence that these will change in future.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It’s almost as if these twerps watched the Hollyweird film Day after Tomorrow & thought they could use the script….
I can’t forget the exposé that showed the dramatic glacier-calving in Bore’s Inconvenient Lie was actually pinched from her CGI intro in The Day After Tomorrow.
if it happened also 10k years ago, can the ‘experts’ be sure the reason wasn’t the same
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Two thoughts. Given the explanation for this forecast is:- “But the system is being eroded by the faster-than-expected melt-off of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets,“
Today we can also read “Arctic sea ice continued its stonking recovery last month, recording its 24th highest level in the 45-year modern satellite record. As reported previously in the Daily Sceptic, the ice climbed to a 21-year high on January 8th.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/10/arctic-sea-ice-continues-its-stonking-recovery/
Secondly, wasn’t Greenland ice-free about 1000 years ago and as far as we know, those circumstances didn’t cause a collapse in the system of currents at that time. Where is the logic in their prediction?
You wrote:
Secondly, wasn’t Greenland ice-free about 1000 years ago and as far as we know, those circumstances didn’t cause a collapse in the system of currents at that time. Where is the logic in their prediction?
The ice core records clearly show that the open Arctic 1000 years ago increased ice accumulations which in turn did cause the little ice age.
This cause for the little ice age is not acknowledged, but it is clearly in the Greenland ice core records. It snows more in the northern hemisphere when the Arctic is warm and thawed and more ice causes colder after that.
The more ice correlating with colder is widely acknowledged, but it is not properly acknowledged as the cause. The circumstances of open arctic causing a colder time after the more sequestered ice spreads is part of the self-correcting climate response. Climate is dynamic, what happens in a cold time, less evaporation and snowfall causes a warm time to follow, what happens in a warm time, more evaporation and snowfall, causes a cold time to follow.
I will say it again – “faster than expected” means your model and hypothesis are both wrong. But these “scientists” don’t seem to understand that basic fact.
‘Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible’
You won’t even have time to put on a jacket.
The scientists behind the research said they were shocked
Them ‘scientists’ are an emotional lot. Not. Watts is lying.
although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen
“But that’s not going to stop us from trying to scare you with it.”
But the system is being eroded by the faster-than-expected melt-off of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets, which pours freshwater into the sea and obstructs the sinking of saltier, warmer water from the south.
Liar. The rate of SLR is unchanged for a century.
Every sentence in this article can be picked apart. It is sensationalist junk.
Sea Level and Length of Day
Look at the Leap Second Data. Sea Level went down since 1972 when the Atomic Clock was put in service as a time standard. A rising sea level would slow the earth crust spin rate and more and more leap seconds would have been needed every year.
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp50/leapsecond.cfm
Leap Seconds are being added less frequently. This does show that the earth crust is rotating faster. This means the inertia of earth has decreased due to the snowfall and ice sequestering that we have had since 1972 which moved water from the low latitude oceans to ice on high latitudes, polar regions. This means that the ice volume at both poles and high latitudes has increased and that means the oceans are dropping and not rising. The warming cycle of the past three hundred years is over, and we are in a several hundred-year warm period while the Polar Oceans are thawed sufficiently that evaporation and snowfall with IR out is rebuilding the sequestered ice that will advance and cause the next cooling phase. The glaciers are still retreating so it is still warming, but they are being replenished at their source at a faster rate. Greenland, and other ice on land, and the Antarctic Continent are being net replenished on top at a faster rate than they are losing from the sides. The leap seconds changes do show that.
This is proof that sea level, overall, is lower than it was in 1972 when the Atomic Clock was put into service measuring time most accurately.
There were three more leap seconds added between December 2011 to December 2016 and none since 2016, this is more than seven more years with no added leap second and none expected.
Overall sea level is steady for now, the sequestered ice that is thawing and entering the oceans is balanced by the oceans that are evaporating and the snowfall that is being sequestered near the spin axis of the earth.
Sea Level is hard to measure and hard to average with daily tides and various high and low atmosphere pressure regions over oceans that vary over short- and long-term time periods, while time and Length of Day is measured constantly to a tiny fraction of a second.
Summary: Overall Sea Level went down since 1972 and has been steady since 2016, watch Length of day for the next change.
Oh My God, Not Again –
Water in Changing States Regulates Climate
Many factors influence climate and climate responds immediately to many factors. Climate is self-correcting and some responses are immediate, but some self-correcting factors work over long periods of time. Most people only look at a static energy balance and immediate responses to change.
I have often written or said that water in all of its changing states is most important in regulating the climate.
In order to cool anything, it is most effective to transport the energy to somewhere colder in order to radiate the energy out. Ocean currents transport water warmed in the tropics to the polar oceans and ocean currents transport water cooled by thawing ice back to the tropics. Climate cooled over fifty million years as warm ocean water currents were increasingly blocked from flowing near the equator and diverted into the polar regions.
Ice is abundant in polar regions and other cold places. Ice is ignored by all and that is a major mistake. I have been told that the freezing and thawing of ice all occurs inside the greenhouse and it equals out and can be ignored. This is not correct, the most ice is formed and sequestered in warmest times when the polar oceans are thawed, the most cooling by ice thawing is in coldest times when polar oceans are frozen and when ice extent is most on land. Ice core records show the ice accumulations are most in warmest times and least in coldest times, therefore ice advances after warmest times and causes colder, ice retreats after coldest times and causes warmer, this is cause and not result. Ice ages got colder as ice extent increased, ice advanced fastest as the warm times became cold times, the volume and weight of ice was most at that time, but then the ice volumes were decreasing as the great ice sheets spread and thinned, meltwater helped with the spreading and thinning of the great ice sheets. The weight of ice around the Arctic depressed the land and meltwater flowed downhill into the Arctic Ocean and was trapped until the end of the ice ages. Evidence of this is the warm cycles during the major ice ages in Greenland ice core records, those were meltwater surges into the Arctic Ocean. This is the reason sea level did not rise as the great ice sheets thawed. The rapid warming as the coldest times ended and rapid warming started, occurred because the great ice sheets had already thinned. Sea level rose in surges as the trapped melt water broke out of the Arctic.
We will have no more major ice ages because enough ice is sequestered on land that the oceans cannot get deep and warm enough to cause a major warm period with enough warm water in the arctic to produce enough ice to start another major ice age.
Antarctica gained much ice during every past major warm period and did not give it back fast enough. It took many repeating, increasingly larger ice ages to accomplish this and now the new ten thousand years of alternating warm and cold periods that exchange much less ice and water is the new normal. CO2 does not influence the temperature that sea ice freezes and thaws and will not change the temperature bounds, the temperature bounds are determined by the advancing and retreating ice extents on land and the increasing and decreasing volumes of ice the thaw for cooling and the increasing and decreasing ice extents that change albedo. Water is abundant, water changes states, water in its changing states regulates the climate. If any factor causes warming, that will promote more ice formation which will counter the warming. This ice and water cycle has alternating warm and cold periods, there is no static equilibrium, this is a dynamic cycle. There is thermostat control, the thermostat setting is the temperature that sea ice freezes and thaws, the control function is the sea ice, sea ice is removed when more land ice is needed, sea ice is restored when enough land ice is being pushed into the turbulent saltwater currents to chill the water to below freezing.
The ice cycle cooling, the ice cycle self-correction, long term self-correction, changed over time, for some examples, forty-thousand-year cycles became hundred-thousand-year cycles and now have become thousand-year cycles. These changes occurred because the volumes of ocean that became ice age ice and then thawed and became ocean water changed over time as circulation of warm water into the Arctic changed over time and as the ice retained on Antarctica over multiple cycles increased.
Static energy balance theory wants to maintain a steady state condition with stable ice shelves and stable sea ice that does not change. Ice shelves are build by land ice pushing out over oceans, ice shelves are removed by water thawing the underside, or the ice shelf breaking off and floating into warmer water, there is not a stable steady state condition, when land ice is depleted the salt water currents remove sea ice and even ice shelves and then the evaporation and snowfall rebuilds the land ice until it sends out new ice shelves and enough ice is pushed into the oceans to rebuild the sea ice. Land ice can only be replenished when the oceans are thawed and exposed for evaporation. Land ice can only deplete when the oceans are covered with ice shelves and sea ice. This is dynamic self-correcting balance, not static steady-state balance. Ice core records show that ice accumulation on Antarctica was more during the warmest time 130 thousand years ago, when oceans were deeper than now and warmer than now, periodic loss of sea ice and ice shelves are necessary to maintain the sequestered ice on land.
Climate future will have alternating warmer and colder cycles, as it has had for millions of years, but the temperatures and sea levels will cycle inside the bounds of the most recent ten thousand years, this is the new normal.
My theory has evolved over more than 15 years since April 2008 when I attended a lecture by Tom Wysmuller about theory by Maurice Ewing and William Donn from the 1950-60s.
Reference: http://colderside.com/Colderside/F.A.Q..html Especially 2c
Herman A (Alex) Pope
You confuse climate with weather.
Explain, I have no understanding of why you wrote that.
Thousand year cycles of different weather is the changing climate.
In polar regions there are cold periods with sea ice covering the oceans and little evaporation and snowfall that maintains the polar ice on land, so the ice flows into the oceans and chills the oceans and maintains the sea ice and the land ice depletes.
That weather is normal in that cold phase of the climate cycle.
The land ice depletes and the ice flow slows and a warm time follows.
In the warm time, the weather uses evaporation and much snowfall on the land and the land ice is replenished.
That weather is normal in that warm phase of the climate cycle.
There is nothing confusing to me about that.
This hypothesis, theory, is consistent with ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica.
Climate is not in static balance, the climate cycles are in dynamic balance. The climate systems are very complex with storage of warm energy in tropical water that is transported to polar regions to radiate out later. Ice is sequestered in Polar and other regions that cool by thawing later. This not not considered by people who have formed static understanding of climate.
As I understand it, at a minimum that would require convection and the Coriolis effect to stop working…
The climate change over the recent ten thousand years was not as drastic as the climate change over thousands of years before ten thousand years ago. for the recent ten thousand years the climate change has changed convection and the Coriolis effect but not stopped it. Major ice ages did stop convection and the Coriolis effect. Climate is now in a wonderful new normal, it cannot get as warm as before and it cannot get as cold as before, I am referring to before ten thousand years ago. Ice on Antarctica mostly and ice on Greenland and other places are sufficient to remove the water and ice that took part in major climate cycles before ten thousand years ago. Dynamic systems have internal response that depends on internal mass, spring rates, damping, inductance of the internal parts. Static Climate Theories consider external forcing and do not consider internal response. If the internal response is not considered a vehicle, airplane, rocket, whatever is likely to fail.
Climate theory does not properly consider internal response of the climate systems and climate theory has failed, is failing and will fail. Water is abundant in all of its changing states and it is not considered properly in all of its self-correcting influences.
Simulating changes over a period of 2,000 years on computer models of the global climate
Yawn. Why do they think that tells us anything useful?
Modelling is fine if you understand what models are. It’s the conflation of modelling with science and with accurate forecasting that is the problem.
When will they ever learn . . .
We are truly doomed I tell Ye Grab yer tinfoil hats and make for the hills, or better yet emigrate to sub Sahara, ‘coz Armageddon is coming?
Computer modelling: garbage in, garbage out.
Does the AMOC transport ‘carbon’? In black chunks? I always like “warming….,increasing greenhouse gases”. The plural is more frightening, but it’s CARBON DIOXIDE you mean, isn’t it, luvvy? And ever looked at the saturation hypothesis? So you are frightened about an increase of one molecule to four per ten thousand of our atmosphere in 170 years? Another one to five might take another 100 years. Calm down, matey
Does the AMOC transport ‘carbon’? In black chunks? I always like “warming….,increasing greenhouse gases”. The plural is more frightening, but it’s CARBON DIOXIDE you mean, isn’t it, luvvy? And ever looked at the saturation hypothesis? So you are frightened about an increase of one molecule to four per ten thousand of our atmosphere in 170 years? Another one to five might take another 100 years. Calm down, matey
“What will be the effect of climate change be on AMOC.”
It is ‘affect’ – something that produces an outcome, the latter being the effect.
But if AMOC affects climate, how can climate affect AMOC?
Climate change: an affect that is its own effect. The whole subject is the babble of lunatics in the mad house.
Judging by the charts here the only part of the Arctic sea ice seriously affected by not being there is in the Barents sea where the warm eddy is in the map at the head of the article. There is also a lack of sea ice in the St Lawrence Newfoundland area but that isn’t Arctic and both are in the warm water areas in the map.
“A study shows” – a new variation on “scientists say”
Disclaimer: No science was involved in this new interpretation of the data – “Using computer models and past data.” The data has been tortured yet again and another confession obtained.
Also #studysuggests on Twitter.
Mostly by journalists who have had a press-release they don’t understand with a headline they like and want to pass on as most ‘news’ is these days #prasnews filtered propaganda.
The slowest AMOC events are during negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes, e.g. summer 2007, both ends of 2010, March 2013, February 2018 etc. That immediately rules out rising CO2 forcing as that is modeled to increase positive NAO.
When the AMOC (overturning) slows, the Gulf Stream doesn’t slow down, so part of the GS flow has to then warm the AMO and Arctic Ocean instead of overturning. That is why the AMO and Arctic are normally warmer during each centennial solar minimum, due to an increase in negative NAO conditions.
Ben Franklin wrote about the Gulf Stream. He learned of it while investigating the difference in sailing times between England and the colony’s. He published his research for free to benefit commerce. This current (pun intended) nonsense about the AMOC reminds me of a quote from Lavrently Beria about crime. The 21st Century version goes something like, “Show me the model, and I will show you the climate change.”
The alarmists are losing the debate, hence the digging up of old greenfoolery and even more distorted, modelled nonsense