'Worse than we thought…' another paper suggests collapse of the Atlantic current – citing science fiction

From YALE UNIVERSITY, another science paper that cites one of the worst ever science fiction movies. Sigh…

day-after-tomorrow

Study finds potential instability in Atlantic Ocean water circulation system

New Haven, Conn. – One of the world’s largest ocean circulation systems may not be as stable as today’s weather models predict, according to a new study.

In fact, changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — the same deep-water ocean current featured in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” — could occur quite abruptly, in geologic terms, the study says. The research appears in the Jan. 4 online edition of the journal Science Advances.

“We show that the possibility of a collapsed AMOC under global warming is hugely underestimated,” said Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University and lead author of the study. Liu began the research when he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and continued it at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, prior to coming to Yale.

AMOC is responsible for carrying oceanic heat northward in the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of a lower limb of denser, colder water that flows south, and an upper limb of warm, salty water that flows north. The system is a major factor for regional climate change, affecting the Atlantic rim countries, especially those in Europe.

“In current models, AMOC is systematically biased to be in a stable regime,” Liu said. “A bias-corrected model predicts a future AMOC collapse with prominent cooling over the northern North Atlantic and neighboring areas. This has enormous implications for regional and global climate change.”

A collapse of the AMOC system, in Liu’s model, would cool the Northern Atlantic Ocean, cause a spreading of Arctic sea ice, and move tropical Atlantic rain belts farther south.

While a calamity on the order of the fictional plot of “The Day After Tomorrow” is not indicated, the researchers said a significant weather change could happen quickly in the next few centuries.

“It’s a very provocative idea,” said study co-author Zhengyu Liu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute. “For me it’s a 180-degree turn because I had been thinking like everyone else.”

The researchers stressed that their new model may require additional refinement, as well. They said detailed information about water salinity, ocean temperature, and melting ice — over a period of decades — is essential to the accuracy of AMOC models.

The researchers also noted the major impact that climate change itself has on AMOC patterns. Additional carbon dioxide, for example, warms the cold water of the North Atlantic. Such developments would have an impact on AMOC behavior, the researchers said.

###

Other co-authors of the study are Shang-Ping Xie of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Jiang Zhu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China funded the research

 

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January 4, 2017 3:05 pm

I beg to differ — The Day After Tomorrow is at least an above average Science Fiction movies. It just happens to not be a very good Science Fact movie.

ClimateOtter
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 3:17 pm

I beg to disagree. Politically-correct idiocy aside, any scenario that ignore the existence of 1/3 or more of the continent (Canada) can’t be much more than ‘average.’

george e. smith
Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 4, 2017 4:16 pm

Any model that ignores the fact that the earth rotates from West to East, and that the land keeps time much better than the water does, is doomed to make silly predictions like this story.
The tidal bulge rushing Westward across the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean or any other ocean, is going to pile water up on the eastern shores of land masses. Eventually that momentum is converted into potential energy so the maximum height reached is greater than the hydrostatic equilibrium level, so eventually that pile of water has to collapse since it can’t just roll on over the land, and when it collapses, it can only escape to the north and to the south. resulting in a gulf stream, no matter which of the 57 approved water genders the oceans grab onto.
I have always had a secret desire to reverse the rotation direction of the earth so we could have a warm water current flowing up the Pacific coast so we could fish for Dorado in Monterey Bay, and you chaps on the east coast could have some lovely salmon to eat, and have a nice cold water current flowing down to Florida from New York.
But could you give us a call when you notice the gulf stream slowing down so I can start tying up some Dorado flies.
G

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 5, 2017 10:52 am

I also beg to disagree.
Now folks, there is absolutely no possibility that the AMOC will collapse and thus cease functioning as a result of increases in global warming. An increase in global warming will probably cause it to “speed up”, but t’won’t cause it to slow down.
Now most everyone knows that north is “up” or at the “top” and that south is ”down” or at the “bottom”.
And pretty much everyone also knows that the “warm ta hot” portion of the liquid in a container will always “flow” up (north) to the top …… and that the “cool ta cold” portion of the liquid in a container will always “flow” down (south) to the bottom. Atmospheric gases do the same thingy, …. Ya know.
So, as long as it remains “hot” down south at the equator, ….. and remains “cold” up at the North Pole, …… the AMOC (aka: Gulf Stream) will be just fine.
Yours truly,
Eritas Fubar

SidViscous
Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 7, 2017 6:30 pm

Or one that says even though electricity generation is down because the power plants are under water, the phones underwater still work because they have a different source of electricity?
One that apparently works underwater.

Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 3:19 pm

I agree…enjoyable but very far-fetched. I guess that is the attraction.

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Robert Lee (@Bob_Lee_AB)
January 4, 2017 10:11 pm

Not as far fetched as this climate scientist
“It’s a very provocative idea,” said study co-author Zhengyu Liu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute. “For me it’s a 180-degree turn because I had been thinking like everyone else.”
Could it be possible that the “Day After Tomorrow” is much more likely than the above quote?
I don’t believe he was” thinking like everyone else”.

Trebla
Reply to  Robert Lee (@Bob_Lee_AB)
January 5, 2017 4:40 am

If these scientists are consistently discovering that the predictions based on the initial conjecture were incorrect and that the new predictions are “worse than we thought”, doesn’t that invalidate the conjecture? How can we be expected to believe the revised predictions? Perhaps in a few years time, these same scientists will discover that things are “better than we thought”. My head is starting to spin! I suggest they take their time, stop making predictions for a while and wait until they can confidently declare that “Things are exactly as we thought”.

Goldrider
Reply to  Robert Lee (@Bob_Lee_AB)
January 5, 2017 8:50 am

I strongly suspect the only people reading this crap (besides us, uninvited!) are fellow “climate scientists.”
And Yale is about to be under water–the flooding tide of Speshul Snowflake undergrads trying to rewrite all of human history. I’d send a kid to truck-driving school before Yale these days.

PiperPaul
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 4:05 pm

Is that the one where they burn books in the library to keep warm?

Reply to  PiperPaul
January 4, 2017 4:27 pm

Only the law and economics books.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  PiperPaul
January 4, 2017 6:48 pm

Who was the facility manager that left a flue of that size open to leak air from a public building?

Patrick MJD
Reply to  PiperPaul
January 4, 2017 7:59 pm

Notice also sea level rise affected New York only.

Lucius von Steinkaninchen
Reply to  PiperPaul
January 5, 2017 9:23 am

Yes, because they were literally persecuted by what looked like sentient cold though the corridors and had to lock themselves at a room.
P.S.: I like Emmerich’s movies, they are funny – and intentionally so, I think. However, The Day After Tomorrow is one of his minor works, his Magna Opus is 2012. 😉

David
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 6:10 pm

They burned books in a library filled with wooden furniture because they had “no choice.” That is well inside the deep hurting zone.

eck
Reply to  David
January 4, 2017 6:27 pm

OMG! Don’t burn books!! The EPA and PM2.5 police will be all over you!

MarkW
Reply to  David
January 5, 2017 6:34 am

I don’t remember the name of the movie, but at one point the protagonists had taken shelter in a bank, and they burned the money to stay warm.

ghl
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 8:16 pm

I have to say it…
” prominent cooling over the northern North Atlantic and neighboring areas. ”
“Additional carbon dioxide, for example, warms the cold water of the North Atlantic”
“The researchers stressed that their new model may require additional refinement, as well. ”
“The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China funded the research”
Do the funders ever audit what they pay for?

asybot
Reply to  ghl
January 4, 2017 9:07 pm

The researchers stressed that their new model may require additional refinement, as well
Send more money please. These guys are getting desperate.

Phillip Bratby
Reply to  ghl
January 4, 2017 11:08 pm

I wonder how CO2 warms the water. I always thought that the sun was what warmed the water. I’ll have to do a 180-degree turn.

Jon
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 2:57 am

So the model might require additional refinement?
Can’t be climate science then, that’s already settled!

Greg
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 3:52 am

Additional carbon dioxide, for example, warms the cold water of the North Atlantic. Such developments would have an impact on AMOC behavior, the researchers said.

Perhaps someone ought to actually PROVE that rather than just stating it happens.
Like, I mean, do a lab test with an IR lamp and a well ventilated body of water.
We know that incident IR will heat a solid black body, but water can evaporate and IR only penetrates a few microns thus only affecting the likelihood of evaporation.

MarkW
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 6:35 am

When the water warms, the ice melts. This means that the ocean water can loose heat to space much more easily. It’s gonna take a lot more CO2 than we are ever going to produce to over come that negative feedback.

MarkW
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 6:37 am

Phillip, if the air is warmer, than the oceans have to warm up by the same amount in order to continue losing that heat to the air.

Resourceguy
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 6:41 am

Why would they audit something that was pre-ordained in the first place?

george e. smith
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 10:26 am

The oceans lose energy by thermal radiation, irregardless of what the air temperature is. The air doesn’t do a whole lot of thermal radiation. The density is too low to be even approximately black body like. Remember a black body absorbs all radiation so you can’t see through it. We can see all the way through the entire atmosphere, and not even notice it is there.
G

MarkW
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 11:58 am

George, are you arguing that since we can see through the atmosphere that therefore the atmosphere is also transparent to IR?

Hugs
Reply to  ghl
January 5, 2017 1:46 pm

I wonder how CO2 warms the water. I always thought that the sun was what warmed the water. I’ll have to do a 180-degree turn.

The sun warms the water. The water warms the air. Some water evaporates. The CO2 delays air cooling down and keeps water vapour up. Water vapour prevents water from cooling down as fast as it used to be. Spatial-temporal-avg water temp up, avg air temp up.
That’s the theory. How the world works might be different.
For example, the vapour might make clouds that change the picture totally.

Mickey Reno
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 8:48 pm

Above average? I guess there’s no accounting for taste, is there? 🙂
How many careless or stupid readers of the sentence “the same deep-water ocean current featured in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” — could occur quite abruptly, in geologic terms,” will go home scared, like I used to do from my elementary school after those nuclear attack survival drills we had to do in the 60s? Of course, in my defense, I was 6 years old and in the 1st grade. Now we have many poor babies 18 or 20 years old, masquerading as students at major universities, more scared by climate than I was by the threat of nuclear war and who were never taught what “in geologic terms” means.

Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 4, 2017 10:55 pm

Indeed, there are a lot of Sci-Fi movies that are much worse, such as those detailed in the work of Robinson, Crow, Servo, and Nelson.

William Astley
Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 5, 2017 6:55 am

The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate
The notion that the Gulf Stream (William: Also called North Atlantic Drift Current) is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth

Climate science is chock full of urban legends. Urban legend theories are theories (mechanisms) which are repeated when there is obvious data and logic that supports the assertion that the theories in question are completely incorrect, not part of the solution.
Something is rotten in climate science when data and analysis that contradicts a ‘theory’ is ignored.
1. The discrete thermal halone ocean conveyor theory has been proven incorrect by ocean float data. The discrete thermal halone conveyor started with a picture that Wally Broeker published without proof in a paper. Ocean float data shows only 8% of the flow in the North Atlantic follows the Broeker conveyor path. Therefore changes in the fresh water flow cannot interrupt the North Atlantic drift current and changes in the North Atlantic drift current do not affect ocean current flow in the Southern Hemisphere.
2. Basic analysis shows the heat transferred by the North Atlantic drift current is three times less than the heat that is transfer from summer warming of the North Atlantic ocean. A complete interruption to the North Atlantic drift current therefore cannot cause the cyclic warming and cooling of Europe and Greenland Ice sheet.
3. There is in the paleo record warming and cooling in the Southern Hemisphere that is simultaneous with the warming and cooling in the North hemisphere. If ocean currents where the cause of the warming there would be roughly a 1000 year lag.
4. When the Southern hemisphere, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Northern hemisphere warm, the Antarctic ice cools. This phenomenon is called confusingly the Polar see-saw (see Svensmark’s attached paper, I will link to Svensmark’s paper in another comment.). The Antarctic ice sheet cools as the albedo of that ice sheet is greater than the albedo of clouds. Therefore, an increase in cloud cover over the Antarctic causes warming of that ice sheet rather than cooling. The albedo of the Greenland ice sheet is low than the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet is not isolated by a polar vortex and hence unlike the Antarctic ice sheet follows the temperature of the surround ocean.
5. The cyclic warming and cooling of the Southern and Northern hemisphere correlates with solar cycle changes. Solar cycle changes are the cause of the cyclic warming and cooling.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130942.htm

Cold Water Ocean Circulation Doesn’t Work As Expected
The familiar model of Atlantic ocean currents that shows a discrete “conveyor belt” of deep, cold water flowing southward from the Labrador Sea is probably all wet.
A 50-year-old model of ocean currents had shown this southbound subsurface flow of cold water forming a continuous loop with the familiar northbound flow of warm water on the surface, called the Gulf Stream.
“Everybody always thought this deep flow operated like a conveyor belt, but what we are saying is that concept doesn’t hold anymore,” said Duke oceanographer Susan Lozier. “So it’s going to be more difficult to measure these climate change signals in the deep ocean.”
The question is how do these climate change signals get spread further south? Oceanographers long thought all this Labrador seawater moved south along what is called the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), which hugs the eastern North American continental shelf all the way to near Florida and then continues further south.
But studies in the 1990s using submersible floats that followed underwater currents “showed little evidence of southbound export of Labrador sea water within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC),” said the new Nature report.
Scientists challenged those earlier studies, however, in part because the floats had to return to the surface to report their positions and observations to satellite receivers. That meant the floats’ data could have been “biased by upper ocean currents when they periodically ascended,” the report added.
To address those criticisms, Lozier and Bower launched 76 special Range and Fixing of Sound floats into the current south of the Labrador Sea between 2003 and 2006. Those “RAFOS” floats could stay submerged at 700 or 1,500 meters depth and still communicate their data for a range of about 1,000 kilometers using a network of special low frequency and amplitude seismic signals.
But only 8 percent of the RAFOS floats’ followed the conveyor belt of the Deep Western Boundary Current, according to the Nature report. About 75 percent of them “escaped” that coast-hugging deep underwater pathway and instead drifted into the open ocean by the time they rounded the southern tail of the Grand Banks.
Eight percent “is a remarkably low number in light of the expectation that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for Labrador Sea Water,” the researchers wrote.
Studies led by Lozier and other researchers had previously suggested cold northern waters might follow such “interior pathways” rather than the conveyor belt in route to subtropical regions of the North Atlantic. But “these float tracks offer the first evidence of the dominance of this pathway compared to the DWBC.”

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate

The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth
If you grow up in England, as I did, a few items of unquestioned wisdom are passed down to you from the preceding generation. Along with stories of a plucky island race with a glorious past and the benefits of drinking unbelievable quantities of milky tea, you will be told that England is blessed with its pleasant climate courtesy of the Gulf Stream, that huge current of warm water that flows northeast across the Atlantic from its source in the Gulf of Mexico. That the Gulf Stream is responsible for Europe’s mild winters is widely known and accepted, but, as I will show, it is nothing more than the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend.
Recently, however, evidence has emerged that the Younger Dryas began long before the breach that allowed freshwater to flood the North Atlantic. What is more, the temperature changes induced by a shutdown in the conveyor are too small to explain what went on during the Younger Dryas.  Some climatologists appeal to a large expansion in sea ice to explain the severe winter cooling.  I agree that something of this sort probably happened, but it’s not at all clear to me how stopping the Atlantic conveyor could cause a sufficient redistribution of heat to bring on this vast a change.

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Gulf.pdf

Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe’s mild winters?
By R. SEAGER, D. S. BATTISTI, J. YIN, N. GORDON, N. NAIK, A. C. CLEMENT and M. A. CANE
It is widely believed by scientists and lay people alike that the transport of warm
water north in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift, and its release to the atmosphere, is a major reason why western Europe’s winters are so much milder (as much as 15–20 degC) than those of eastern North America (Fig. 1). The idea appears to have been popularized by M. F. Maury in his book The physical geography of the sea and its meteorology (1855) which went through many printings in the United States and the British Isles and was translated into three languages.
In summary, the east–west asymmetry of winter climates on the seaboards of the North Atlantic is created by north-westerly advection over eastern North America and by zonal advection into Europe. The Pacific Ocean has an analogous arrangement with meridional advection being an especially strong cooling over Asia. Since western Europe is indeed warmed by westerly advection off the Atlantic, we next assess how the surface fluxes over the Atlantic are maintained.
In conclusion, while OHT warms winters on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean by a few degC, the much larger temperature difference across the ocean, and that between the maritime areas of north-western Europe and western North America, are explained by the interaction between the atmospheric circulation and seasonal storage and release of heat by the ocean. Stationary waves greatly strengthen the temperature contrast across the North Atlantic and are themselves heavily influenced by the net effect of orography. In contrast, transport of heat by the ocean has a minor influence on the wintertime zonal asymmetries of temperature. Even in the zonal mean, OHT has a small effect compared to those of seasonal heat storage and release by the ocean and atmospheric heat transport. In retrospect these conclusions may seem obvious, but we are unaware of any published explanation of why winters in western Europe are mild that does not invoke poleward heat transport by the ocean as an important influence that augments its maritime climate.

William Astley
Reply to  William Astley
January 5, 2017 9:22 am

The discovery of cyclic abrupt climate change and the urban legends that were created to try to explain cyclic abrupt climate change. The following is additional information concerning this interesting subject.
The following is the Antarctic ice core analysis that shows how the earth’s temperature in the last 420,000 years has changed.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/vostok/graphics/tempplot5.gif
The resolution of ice sheet, ice core data analysis is dependent on the amount of yearly snowfall in the region in question. Due to the extreme cold on the Antarctic ice sheet and the fact that the Antarctic ice sheet is isolated from the Southern sea weather systems by an extremely strong and persistent polar vortex, the yearly snowfall on the Antarctic ice sheet is very small as compared to the snowfall on the Greenland ice sheet.
The Antarctic ice sheet, ice core proxy data therefore drastically smooths the cyclic temperature change on the earth and does not show the magnitude of the temperature change in the Northern Hemisphere and misses some of temperature changes in Southern Sea due to strong Antarctic Polar vortex.
This is the Greenland Ice Sheet Temperatures in the Last 100,000 years and for the last 11,000 years.
http://www.hidropolitikakademi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/4.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
The big surprise when the first Greenland Ice core data was analyzed was the discovery of cyclic abrupt climate change which is not shown in the Antarctic ice sheet data.
As there was and still is no known mechanism that can cyclically abrupt change the earth’s climate and the first Greenland ice core was distorted due to past ice flow movement where the core was taken from, a second Greenland ice core was drilled 30 miles from the first, at a location which is at the top of a small mountain range where there is no ice movement.
The second Greenland ice core analysis confirmed the first Greenland ice core analysis.
Something causes the planet to abruptly warm and cool. It is known that solar cycle changes correlate with the cyclic abrupt climate change and that there are abrupt geomagnetic field changes which also correlate with cyclic abrupt climate changes.
The cyclic abrupt geomagnetic field changes currently also do not have an explanation.
The largest cooling event is the 12,900 year ago abrupt cooling event which is called the Younger Dryas cooling event. At that time the planet when from interglacial warm to glacial cold with 70% of the cooling occurring in less than a decade. The Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event lasted for 1200 years at which time the planet returned to interglacial warm.
The Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event occurred when solar insolation at 65N was maximum which is one of roughly a dozen different observations that supports the assertion the glacial/interglacial cycle is not caused by changes in solar insolation at 65N.
Milankovitch’s theory is also an urban legend, not part of the solution as to what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle, the milder cyclic warming and cooling cycles, and what cause the Younger Dryas type cyclic abrupt climate change events.
Initially paleo climatologists appealed to an interruption to the North Atlantic drift current as the cause of the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event.
The interruption to North Atlantic drift current theory was proven to be incorrect as it was found that there was a massive flow of fresh water that occurred a 1000 years before the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event (there was some initial errors in the dating of the two events which was one of the reasons as to why the interruption to the North Atlantic drift current urban legend got started).
There was no cooling at the time of the massive flow of fresh water which disproves the hypothesis that a flow of fresh water will interrupt the North Atlantic drift current and supports the assertion that even if there was an interruption to the North Atlantic drift current there would be a relatively small change in Northern Hemisphere temperature as the heating due to drift current is three times small than the amount of heat that is released in the winter from the solar heating of North Atlantic in the summer. (See paper link in my above comment.)
All of the cyclic temperature changes have the same periodicity. As the periodicity of the cyclic change is the same during both glacial and interglacial cycles and is very stable this indicates the cause of the cyclic warming and cooling is ‘outside of the Earth system(s)’.
There is solar cycle caused isotope changes in the ice cores and in the ocean floor sediments that correlate with the warming and cooling. There are more than a dozen independent observations and analysis result that support the assertion that solar cycle changes are causing the cyclic warming and cooling in the paleo record.
The unanswered question is how does the sun change cyclically to cause what is observed?
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml

Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock by Stefan Rahmstorf
Many paleoclimatic data reveal a approx. 1,500 year cyclicity of unknown origin. A crucial question is how stable and regular this cycle is. An analysis of the GISP2 ice core record from Greenland reveals that abrupt climate events appear to be paced by a 1,470-year cycle with a period that is probably stable to within a few percent; with 95% confidence the period is maintained to better than 12% over at least 23 cycles. This highly precise clock points to an origin outside the Earth system; oscillatory modes within the Earth system can be expected to be far more irregular in period.

The same periodicity of temperature change is also found in the Southern hemisphere. The following is a summary of the analysis of the Antarctic Peninsula ice core data. As the Antarctic Peninsula extends outside of the Antarctic polar vortex it captures of the temperature of Southern sea. The Southern Sea warms and cools with the same periodicity as the temperature changes in the Northern hemisphere.
The finding that both hemispheres are warming and cooling with the same periodicity supports the assertion that what causes the cyclic warming and cooling affects the entire planet with most of the cooling and warming occurring at high latitudes.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/05/is-the-current-global-warming-a-natural-cycle/

“Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … ….The current global warming signal is therefore the slowest and among the smallest in comparison with all HRWEs in the Vostok record, although the current warming signal could in the coming decades yet reach the level of past HRWEs for some parameters. The figure shows the most recent 16 HRWEs in the Vostok ice core data during the Holocene, interspersed with a number of LRWEs. …. ….We were delighted to see the paper published in Nature magazine online (August 22, 2012 issue) reporting past climate warming events in the Antarctic similar in amplitude and warming rate to the present global warming signal. The paper, entitled "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature, 2012,doi:10.1038/nature11391), reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….

Reply to  William Astley
January 5, 2017 11:21 am

Wow, that is great stuff. I have never heard anyone suggest that the gulf stream was not the source of Europe’s mild winters. However, these papers you cite do seem to explain things well.

MarkW
Reply to  William Astley
January 5, 2017 11:59 am

Jeff, Seattle also has mild winters. It’s about the same latitude as Britain, but there is no Gulf Stream in the Pacific.

Reply to  lorcanbonda
January 6, 2017 12:44 pm

Having never seen it I can’t judge the quality of the move, but having seen many clips from it, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with science at all whether based of fact or fiction. To be called science fiction there should be at least some resemblance to real science.

Bloke down the pub
January 4, 2017 3:08 pm

worst ever science fiction movies. Nowhere even close. Still ballone of course

ClimateOtter
Reply to  Bloke down the pub
January 4, 2017 3:18 pm

most of the ‘man-made’ global warming movies which came out over the last ten years were definitely far worse.

Reply to  Bloke down the pub
January 4, 2017 5:13 pm

‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ is generally reckoned to be the world worst science fiction movie, so bad it has cult status.

Felflames
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 4, 2017 7:29 pm

I always wondered about Plans 1 though 8 ….

Frederick M Slay
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 4, 2017 8:09 pm

Anything with Bela Lugosi is a classic in my eyes!

jones
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 4, 2017 10:41 pm

Although I hesitate to differ with you I do think that “The Thing With Two Heads” has a rather unique awfulness all of its own…… Just a view of course…

Mike McMillan
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 4, 2017 10:47 pm

They had denialist plots and had their funding cut.

tony mcleod
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 4, 2017 10:55 pm

So that’s where he got his hairstyle from.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 5, 2017 3:18 am

“tony mcleod January 4, 2017 at 10:55 pm”
In some kind of “pot” of hair cream? Like where you get your “science”?

Resourceguy
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 5, 2017 6:43 am

Did Al Gore star in that one?

george e. smith
Reply to  Leo Smith
January 5, 2017 10:32 am

The best ever sci-fi movie is the one about the giant crystals that grow when it gets wet, until it collapses and falls over; shattering and launching a new wave of growing crystals that can climb over any barrier.
G

Reply to  Leo Smith
January 5, 2017 11:28 am

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes…

johnmarshall
Reply to  Bloke down the pub
January 5, 2017 2:27 am

How about “Attack of the fifty foot woman”

Andrew Bennett
Reply to  johnmarshall
January 5, 2017 7:46 am

Has to be buckaroo banzai for me; so bad it was hilarious.

Timo Soren
January 4, 2017 3:11 pm

I think their quote should be

“A bias-introduced model predicts a future AMOC collapse…”

Latitude
January 4, 2017 3:12 pm

It’s hard to take any of these papers serious….in another few years they will correct the current biases…
…and this paper will be trash too

Walter Sobchak
January 4, 2017 3:13 pm

“bias-corrected model predicts ”
The hierarchy of lies in descending order:
lies
damned lies
statistics
spreadsheets
computer models
bias-corrected models

Ross King
Reply to  Walter Sobchak
January 4, 2017 3:36 pm

Well said, that man!
Add “Spurious Externalities”

Walter Sobchak
Reply to  Ross King
January 4, 2017 3:57 pm

Say what?

MarkW
Reply to  Ross King
January 5, 2017 6:39 am

What.

Resourceguy
Reply to  Ross King
January 5, 2017 6:44 am

+1

eric
January 4, 2017 3:14 pm

These kids know where the big money comes from (gov’t) and are anxious to get a piece of the action.

ClimateOtter
January 4, 2017 3:15 pm

‘significant weather change could happen quickly in the next few centuries.’ – I guess ‘in geologic terms’ that is pretty abrupt.
But I will BET we will adapt to it easily. As will many (most) other species who have also seen all of this before.

Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 4, 2017 5:54 pm

Climate Otter, your previous Griff takedown concerning Susan Crawford ranks as THE all time blog great riposte. Highest regards.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  ristvan
January 4, 2017 9:05 pm

Susan Crockford.

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 4, 2017 5:56 pm

A “significant weather change” can happen in 3, 2, 1 seconds. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen.
I do not know what a “few centuries” means, but I do not expect to be around.

MarkW
Reply to  John F. Hultquist
January 5, 2017 6:40 am

When I’ve said something inappropriate, the weather around my wife can change even quicker than that.

Hivemind
Reply to  ClimateOtter
January 4, 2017 9:17 pm

Quickly in geologic terms means thousands to hundreds of thousands.

chris moffatt
January 4, 2017 3:16 pm

“…“A bias-corrected model predicts a future AMOC collapse with prominent cooling over the northern North Atlantic ”
Here we go again. What bias corrections? they have merely introduced biases to manipulate a model to give them an answer they want. This is not junk science it is total-rubbish-science.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  chris moffatt
January 4, 2017 3:39 pm

Rubbish could be turned into compost, bio fuel, or, as a last-last resort, macrame. This paper is not up to that standard. It doesn’t make the cut for rubbish.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  chris moffatt
January 4, 2017 8:28 pm

They used one of them bias corrections to get rid of sea level stagnancy and another for the Pause, too. The science is settled and the debate is over, yet they admit it was full of biases! Look at the names of the authors and the funding which included the PRC. Maybe Trump was right- it’s a Chinese hoax we’re experiencing er… Sarc.
I note they use the term climate change from CO2 entering the North Atlantic causing serious cooling tho’. Is this what they have in store for us for the future. I won’t likely survive another 60yr cycle so we can go thru the next big cooling alarm with new sceptics. That might be how they keep it going. They even say that 1970s cooling alarm was a myth so they can do the same with old global warming.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Gary Pearse
January 4, 2017 8:52 pm

Down the memory hole…

Scott
January 4, 2017 3:17 pm

“The researchers said a significant weather change could happen quickly in the next few centuries”
Boy that’s really sticking your predictive neck out. Care to narrow it down a bit?

schitzree
Reply to  Scott
January 4, 2017 5:51 pm

Narrow it down? How about Nov 5th, 2132. About lunch time, say quarter past 1.
Does that help any? ^¿^

Mark
January 4, 2017 3:18 pm

Drain the Swamp!

High Treason
January 4, 2017 3:23 pm

People will kick themselves when it is revealed that the whole thing is one exaggerated fantasy fuelling even more exaggeration and fantasy. This makes it all seem too apacalyptic, requiring even mnore exaggeration to make people believe the earlier exaggerated fantasies. The entire thing has gone beyond rediculous.
We have all had to contend with habitual liars- a lie to support a lie, to support a lie. Eventually, you pick an outright lie, an inconsistency or something that is just too fanciful to believe. The penny has dropped- everything the liar has told you was a load of baloney. What do you feel like saying? “Please explain.”
When Senator Hanson in Australia says those immortal words, she exposing yet another litany of lies, another group that has no crdibility. People seem to be immune to being woken up because we have nothing but half truth from the mainstream media-we have become immune to the truth!
It is a bit like Minties- those sticky lollies in Australia that routinely pull out the fillings in teeth. They even look like a melted down BS meter. The slogan “Have a Minties moment” could read “Have a please explain moment”- anothe piece of Political correctness BS busted as a load of garbage. If the climate claims seem too cataclysmic to be true, they probably are- bit like internet scams-if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Here are some of the labels for Minties please explain edition- UN declares the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to NOT be a Jewish Holy site- please explain. Former UN Human rights comissioner, Navi Pillay declaring that Israel should be up for human rights charges because they do not share their Iron Dome technology with Hamas- please explain. IPCC chief, Christiana Figuerres stating that Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China is the best model. UN obviously is OK for the iron fist of totalitarianism to combat a non-existent “problem” that they are raking in trillions to “combat.” please explain. Safe schools co-founder, Roz Ward admitting that the safe schools program is not about stopping bullying, but about promoting alternate sexuality. Politicians that still support this propaganda- please explain. The Australian Greens supporting the so-called “anti-fascist” groups who behave just like Nazi Brownshirts-please explain. We all have our favourite “please explain” moments of political correctness gone too far to be believable. Why does mainstream media report such blatant BS. Please explain.

JohnKnight
Reply to  High Treason
January 4, 2017 5:25 pm

Well, as best I can tell, a group of ruthless hyper-wealthy control freaks bought up the mass media, and a stable of ethically challenged politicons and acedemons, and therewith attempted to propagandize the world into going along with elitist global governance, under their thumbs.

January 4, 2017 3:25 pm

Perhaps if these sorts of papers had to be set to music, we’d get more enjoyment from them. Gilbert & Sullivan spring to my mind for a suitable style.

MarkW
Reply to  John Shade
January 5, 2017 6:42 am

I am the very model of a modern major general.

January 4, 2017 3:25 pm

Remember these words:
“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” -Stephen Schneider, lead IPCC author, 1989
And this:
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first ipcc chair, 1994

Reply to  Eric Simpson
January 4, 2017 3:50 pm

+ a bunch

Latitude
Reply to  Eric Simpson
January 4, 2017 3:57 pm

yes…..and these are the kinds of scientists in the 97%

Devil
Reply to  Eric Simpson
January 6, 2017 9:32 am

And it goes and goes and goes .. viral.
Misquotations should be punished.
Houghton said: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accide”
Source: http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/houghton-and-god.pdf
Article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fabricated-quote-used-to-discredit-climate-scientist-1894552.html
And the citation of Schneider (RIP) is followed by: ” I hope that means being both.”
Don’t ever trust quotes that you don’t ripped out of the context by yourself (or even fabricated by yourself)

PiperPaul
January 4, 2017 3:33 pm

I prefer The Arrival (from 1996) myself:
“Zane discovers the plant doubles as a front for an underground alien base. The very different looking aliens are able to disguise themselves with an external skin to infiltrate human society. Zane finds that all of the bases expel large amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.”

Jim G1
January 4, 2017 3:42 pm

The “bias” they corrected was a bias toward what is presently observed to occur. I note no indication of any observations to justify changing this “bias”. So the change was simply pulled out of the nether regions of their fundament. The entire exercise is simply saying “if” the AMOC were to fail yata yata yata. And if a frog had wings it would not bump its ass so much, as well. Stupidity on steroids in the world of what is called climate “science”. Tax dollars paid for this? That’s the real problem.

January 4, 2017 3:49 pm

New Haven, Conn. – One of the world’s largest ocean circulation systems may not be as stable as today’s weather models predict, according to a new study.
No way.
A model that may not be accurate as they though…
huh, who’dathunk?

raybees444
Reply to  mikerestin
January 4, 2017 7:52 pm

Yes, that one sentence shows these “scientists” for the useless flunkies that they are.

raybees444
Reply to  raybees444
January 4, 2017 7:53 pm

Sorry, I was attempting to reply to Crispin just below.

Crispin in Waterloo
January 4, 2017 3:56 pm

“Additional carbon dioxide, for example, warms the cold water of the North Atlantic.”
How?

Rick K
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
January 4, 2017 4:32 pm

I noticed the same.
What a load!
Makes one wonder why CO2 doesn’t “warm the warm water of the South Atlantic” in addition to the “cold water of the North Atlantic.”
They must never read their own stuff.

Shooter
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
January 4, 2017 6:31 pm

Because ‘everyone knows’ CO2 warms the oceans, air, land, what have you. CO2 is a pollutant, so they just put it in the modelling study because it’s another one of those ‘Everyone Knows’ studies.

MarkW
Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
January 5, 2017 6:44 am

When the air warms, the water has to warm by a similar amount in order to lose the heat being put into it by the sun.

willhaas
January 4, 2017 3:57 pm

The reality is that the radiant greenhouse effect, upon which the AGW conjecture depends, has not been observed in any real greenhouse, anywhere on Earth, or anywhere in the solar system. It is nothing but science fiction making the AGW conjecture nothing but science fiction too. It is the heat capacity of the atmophsere combined with the force of gravity that creates a convective greenhouse effect that, as derived from first principals, keeps the Earth’s surface on average 33 degrees C warmer because of the atmosphere. 33 degrees C is what has been calculated and 33 degres C is what has been observed. Additional warmth caused by an additional radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. Hence all papers supportive of the AGW conjecture must all be regarded as some form of science ficition. I think that it is appropriate for works of science fiction to reference other works of science fiction as long as we realize that such is all just science fiction. May you live long and prosper.

Marnof
January 4, 2017 4:01 pm

“In current models, AMOC is systematically biased to be in a stable regime,” Liu said.
“Ooh! Let’s make it unstable and see what happens!” This is like poking the exposed brain with a probe to see which limb jumps.
I like the concept of stability bias, though.

TomRude
January 4, 2017 4:05 pm

This Liu should apply for Curry’s job, perfect credentials…/sarc

TomRude
January 4, 2017 4:07 pm

Notwithstanding that glaciation will be a case of extreme global warming…

TomRude
January 4, 2017 4:09 pm

“It’s a very provocative idea,” said study co-author Zhengyu Liu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute. “For me it’s a 180-degree turn because I had been thinking like everyone else.”

Yep when you can’t make it stick, try the opposite… There is still a chance Liu will go another 180-degree, LOL

The Original Mike M
Reply to  TomRude
January 4, 2017 4:20 pm

To them it’s like a dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luDklth_mbM

knr
January 4, 2017 4:12 pm

Its another useful reminder that in climate ‘science’ you really can get away with producing any old sh*t , has long as it supports the cause it simply does not matter if it lacks any academic validity.

The Original Mike M
January 4, 2017 4:14 pm

So there has to be evidence that it happened before when the region was warmer right? comment image

January 4, 2017 4:22 pm

Nice to see that someone has been reading my repeated posts about the nonlinear instability of the AMOC. Here it is again:
The positive feedback loop of salinity-downwelling-Greenland ice melt gives the AMOC its chaotic bistability. The AMOC and Gulf Stream are driven by the salinity-downwelling positive feedback. The Gulf Stream brings high salinity water to the North Atlantic. When it cools its higher salinity makes it exceptionally dense so that it downwells all the way down to the ocean floor. This is the deep water formation in the far North Atlantic (OK Bill it’s not the Norwegian Sea). This deep cold dense water flows south, completing the loop of the AMOC. By doing so it in turn propels the northward Gulf Stream up on the surface, reinforcing the whole circuit with positive feedback. This feedback-reinforced AMOC considerably warms North West Europe and transports warmer water right up to the Arctic.
In the paradigm of current climate science this positive feedback at the heart of the AMOC would be assumed to be runaway and would soon be expected (projected) to turn the Atlantic Ocean into a whirling maelstrom like a washing machine. However in the real world of complex systems positive feedback does not do this, instead it causes oscillation and intermittency. Each “run” of the positive feedback causes eventually a negative feedback, which cuts it off. In the North Atlantic the negative feedback that cuts off the Gulf and cold downwelling feedback – which warms the Atlantic high latitudes – is Greenland ice melt and a resulting freshwater pulse, which chokes off the cold water formation and downwelling.
What results from these intermittent pulses or chaotic oscillations of the AMOC is what we call the AMO. This gives a chaotic instability to the whole NH climate.
By contrast in the SH there is no such instability, there is no meridionally bounded ocean south of Africa and South America. In the Southern Ocean you have the unimpeded circumpolar circulation. Thus no salinity feedback driving meridional current loops. Thus in the SH both oceanography and climate are much more stable and changes occur more smoothly over much longer timescales. This gives a reciprocating interplay of climate change between the two hemispheres.

Bill Illis
Reply to  ptolemy2
January 4, 2017 5:17 pm

We just had a long discussion about this a few threads ago and I have no idea why you did not learn anything from that. THE SEA ICE is where everything starts.
The AMOC is not driven by the Gulf Stream and Greenland ice-melt has absolutely nothing to do with it.

mysteryseeker
Reply to  Bill Illis
January 4, 2017 5:41 pm

Agree Fully!

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  Bill Illis
January 4, 2017 6:12 pm

I missed that discussion of a few threads ago.
If I was asked to explain the Gulf Stream I likely would start with the Northeast Trades, an enclosed Gulf of Mexico, and the rotating Earth.
The image below indicates the Gulf Stream dissipates south of the Island of Newfoundland.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/gulf300_big.gif

Reply to  Bill Illis
January 4, 2017 10:39 pm

Bill
What I am saying about AMOC – that the northeast flowing Gulf Stream is linked by simple mass balance to south flowing deep water – is not only my idea but has been the conventional understanding of AMOC for years. That is what is implied in its name “overturning”. In your post you argue that downwelling is not located in the Norwegian sea but somewhere else in the Arctic and I acknowledged this, even spelling your name right.
Here are the comments you made in the previous Wim Rost thread about ocean heat capacity and circulation as a climate driver:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/26/warming-by-less-upwelling-of-cold-ocean-water/#comment-2383327
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/26/warming-by-less-upwelling-of-cold-ocean-water/#comment-2386556
The “brinicle” video that you refer to – a popular BBC video showing a supercooled “river of death” sinking a few yards from the underside of Antarctic ice and freezing a few unlucky starfish, is simply an illustration that very cold and hypersaline water does indeed sink.
If you dispute the existence of the AMOC please make it clear that you are doing so. This is conventional oceanography and nothing to do with CAGW theory.
My point about the nonlinear instability of the AMOC and the salinity feedback are also taken from the extensive literature literature on the subject (I’ll post some refs later if I have time). Folks don’t like hearing about ocean circulation and internal chaotic instability and oscillations thereof since this steals the thunder from simplistic ideas of climate being driven externally by everyone’s pet factor, whether this is CO2, sun and moon cycles, planet orbits or the palm lines in Al Gore’s hands.

Grey Lensman
Reply to  ptolemy2
January 4, 2017 7:25 pm

Quote
The AMOC and Gulf Stream are driven by the salinity-downwelling positive feedback.
Unquote
No it is not, its driven by the earths rotation. Salinity only effects the local area, where it finally plunges, along with temperature. I.E it only affects only the marginal position of the transition layer.

Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 2:07 am

The feedback of salinity and deep water formation driving THC in both the Pacific and Atlantic is described in these papers:
http://uspest.org/ipm/len/Okazaki_etal_2010_Science_NPDW_Suppl.pdf
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/36/12/991.short
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/nature07717.html
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4280.1
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20584.full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL044474/full
this is just the first page of Google Scholar results, there are hundreds more.
You are right that earth’s rotation is a factor in THC. This was first shown by Stommel in 1953 and is referred to as the Stommel circulation. It does not affect my original point at all.
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Abyssal-circulation/more/even-more/stommel-arons-1960-II.pdf

Bill Illis
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 11:05 am

The Gulf Stream is actually driven by surface winds (and then confined by the continental shelf that is at least 200 metres deep).
It is driven across the Atlantic from Africa to the Gulf of Mexico by the Trade Winds. It is then runs up to the 200 metre depth continental shelf of South America, moves into the Gulf of Mexico, is squeezed along Florida into the North Atlantic. The water is constantly flowing in and it has to keep flowing out.
It then picks up the winds now moving south-west to north-east flowing off of North America and this drives it all the way back across the Atlantic to the north side of Europe. Then the winds force it into the Arctic ocean.
The Gulf Stream is always going to flow as long as the Earth is rotating, setting up a certain pattern of winds and confined by continental margins.
Has the Earth changed its rotation. Did the continents move. Did the winds slow down. No salt was involved in this story whatsoever.

MarkW
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 12:03 pm

Cold water is sinking in the arctic. Something has to replace that water at the surface.
There is no one single factor that drives the ocean circulations.

David Riser
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 12:46 pm

Bill,
Thanks for finally bringing up the direct cause of the Gulf Stream. It is a wind driven current in geostrophic balance. even if the amok were to shut down you would still have a gulf stream. I also like that people are popping the silly BS about the Gulf stream warming England. The AMOC is still an area of physical oceanography research. The mass balance equation has yet to be written for it. There is a lot of unknowns about large scale water movements, I sincerely doubt this new paper includes any actual physical oceanographers in the authorship.

Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 3:14 pm

David
Wind only mixes ocean water down to the thermocline. Below that, only deep water formation causes movement or “ventilation”. That’s why during the Mesozoic with much warmer climate and no ice caps, ventilation was weaker and parts of the deep ocean were anoxic. Currently the ocean depths are oxygenated, thanks to deep water formation, not wind.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 5:08 pm

The Gulf Stream starts here. It is driven by the equatorial Trade Winds just like the ENSO is.comment image?w=600&h=364
It then runs up against the continental shelf of South America and is forced northward into the Gulf of Mexico where it often does a “loop” (because the ocean depth is just deep enough here to allow a loop to set up) and then it keeps going around Florida squeezed between the Florida coast and the Bahamas shallows.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/loopcurrent-large.gif
And then it gets into the North Atlantic and continuing to be driven the winds which now shift to the west-east mid-latitude winds, goes all the way up to; well actually Siberia. It does NOT sink until probably one year later after it becomes thick sea ice somewhere close to Siberia.
It is exactly like the Kuroshio Current in the north Pacific which is also driven by the winds.
A person could go on and on here, but I have done it too many times before.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 5:10 pm

The Gulf Stream starts here Next to AFRICA. (fixing the link).comment image

Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 5, 2017 10:16 pm

Bill
I don’t disagree with anything that you describe here. Yes wind blows ocean currents. I’m only saying that the converse is also true, ocean dynamics cause wind, due to temperature and pressure gradients. Causality is bidirectional and the oceans are not passive.

David Riser
Reply to  Grey Lensman
January 6, 2017 10:02 am

Ptolemy2,
Upwelling and mixing cross the thermocline/pycnocline/halocline all the time. It is a conditional thing, has nothing to do with the AMOC other than possible outlets for the moving water as you say. My point and Bills is that wind drives the surface currents, which will not change regardless of the downwellling. Large scale wind patterns have more to do with rotation of the earth, latitude and the sun, rather than than ocean dynamics, Anyway these things are pretty complex and understood in a theoretical sense that does not quite match reality, hence there is still a lot of research into how it all really works.

Crispin in Waterloo
Reply to  ptolemy2
January 4, 2017 7:36 pm

Greenland isn’t melting. If it did, the fresh water goes into the sea just like most of the icebergs: the Baffin Island side.
The ‘fresh water pulse’ idea is great science fiction. It cannot happen fast enough to do anything to turn off the circulation. In fact the return trip along the ocean floor was shown (measurements and all that) to be increasing in speed, not slowing.
On the other hand if the Gulf Stream swung west to warm Newfoundland all the ice would melt off Greenland and the climate would become temperate. I expect that is the eventual result if the new ice age is somehow avoided.
Yes it would flood Florida and parts of Georgia. Who cares? Turn it into a snorkling park and charge admission.

Reply to  Crispin in Waterloo
January 5, 2017 8:49 am

There is an uptick in Greenland ice melt but it is not necessarily anything to do with AGW. It is just the cyclical response to an excursion of the AMOC. That’s the point. Then the AMOC will decrease, it gets colder, then the melt will decrease and the AMOC will strengthen again, it gets warmer, then the melt increases again etc… Its the AMO.

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