From YALE UNIVERSITY, another science paper that cites one of the worst ever science fiction movies. Sigh…
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.
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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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It is cool that the tide seems to be turning.
One group gets paid to produce a model and another gets paid to refute it? Can I get in on this??
“For me it’s a 180-degree turn because I had been thinking like everyone else.”
Earth to Liu: you still are.
Note that all this paper’s aurhors are of Chinese origin. Proving Trump’s tweet that CAGW is a Chinese fabrication to hobble US industry. Worse than the Russian hack of DNC/Podesta?
You all figure out what degree of sarc is merited by this possibly trenchant observation.
You did notice the $Money$ note at the bottom? Right?
“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”
No sarc required. Right there in black and white!
pbh
So Trump was right?! The whole thing is a Chinese hoax!
Glad we took care of that. On to Hillary’s underwear…
I stopped reading at the first mention of the word ‘model’.
This is NOT science. It’s mere speculation cloaked in caveats and models. Bugs the hell outta me.
Climate science has no clue to how the AMOC actually operates. There is no reason to take any of this seriously.
Why has nobody noticed that these guys are running AMOC on their computers?
That’s very funny. You get a gold star.
That IS funny 😆
We do have evidence from the ice cores that there are very abrupt temperature swings such as the Younger Dryas.
Changes in the AMO would be a good candidate for triggering such an event. I’m hard pressed to think of anything else that could generate the sharp changes recorded. So the Yale paper should not be simply dismissed.
Would you entertain the idea of comet showers as a possible explanation for Younger Dryas? Dr, W.M. Napier and my book “Sudden Cold”?
The Gulf Stream needs to have about 200 metres depth of ocean to flow properly. That means there are periods in the ice ages when it does not flow into the Gulf of Mexico and around Florida and then into the North Atlantic, but it actually flows all the way around the Carribean Islands instead.
This changes how much warm water flows directly into the North Atlantic versus just dissipates in a normal Atlantic Gyre.
When sea level falls by about 80 metres versus today in the ice ages, the Gulf Stream changes course and the far North Atlantic cools off. The Ocean currents mean far more than is thought.
Bill its the fact there would have to have been a drop in sea levels to effect the Gulf Stream.ls what clearly suggests that any change in the Gulf Stream was an effect of the ice age and not the cause of it. Because to have dropped the sea level by 80 metres then clearly the ice age must have been well in place by then.
A lot of snow was getting dumped on N America well before there was any change to the Gulf Stream.
I did a drawing of the concept awhile ago, here it is.
This is sea level during the last glacial maximum and one can see there is just not depth in the Gulf of Mexico and next to Florida for a big ocean current like the Gulf Stream to flow through here. In addition, the Caribbean Islands are larger and there are more of them above sea level and the Gulf Stream just does not get in there.
“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.”
WR: Correct. Without detailed and accurate data about the key factors of the oceans (salinity, temperature and water movement) we never can make any prediction about a future climate. No one can. We can only guess.
It can’t collapse, it can only reach a stable equilibrium. If the polar regions get colder due to less warm current, then it creates a bigger differential in temperature, thus encouraging conditions to speed up the current again. If the polar regions get too hot from the current, the current slows and pours less heat into the region, thus cooling it.
Another factor is ice. When the area cools off, ice forms which slows the transfer of heat from the water to the oceans, which means the waters don’t cool as much.
When the waters warm, the ice melts, which means more heat moves from the water to the air, which cools the water.
Whatever you choose to call it AMOC , or THC (Thermohaline Ocean Circulation), according to Oceanographer Dr. Carl Wunsch, it is a “myth”. It keeps cropping up though in attempts to explain the Younger Dryas, and of course now another significant climate change.
Unfortunately, these THC-induced delusions are now legal in several states.
+ 1, no actually plus many, LOL
Science fiction just in: ABC News 24 Hr (Australia), 2016 hottest year evah!
“…and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China funded the research”
_——————
See, Trump was right!
Stealing money, these ‘researchers’ are stealing money…how do I get me a job stealing money?
What a joke…
Both the PDO and AMO will be in their respective 30-yr cool cycles from 2019, which will lead to cooling global temps.
Moreover, the weakest solar cycle since 1790 starts in 2021 and the one following that will likely be the weakest since the Maunder Minimum started in 1645, and the start of another Grand Solar Minimum event, which will last 50~100 years..
The disparity between CAGW’s doom and gloom global warming predictions vs. reality are already large and long enough to disconfirm the CAGW hypothesis… When the above cooling factors occur, the disparity and duration will continue to increase, making CAGW untenable.
As a way to counter this reality, CAGW advocates are coming up with silly “global warming causes global cooling” excuses to site when the inevitable cooling occurs, and CAGW is officially able to be disconfirmed under the rules of the scientific method.
How long with the CAGW hoa-x continue???
And so it goes….until it doesn’t…
Go look at this link – Gulf Stream is well highlighted in red:
“cause a spreading of Arctic sea ice”
Wouldn’t that be a good thing if the melting of the arctic sea ice is a bad thing?
Congratulations. These guys have just hindcasted the Little Ice Age. I believe the planet recovered quite nicely from that event, thank you.
‘Worse than we thought…’
Oh noes….just how much badderer can it get?
With access to tertiary studies increasingly being restricted to bona fide members of various ‘disadvantaged’ minority groups, rather than on a merit basis, plus a very slanted approach to research funding, we can only look forward to more off-center dissertations from our new wave academics.
Not long before we get a paper from someone being awarded a PhD for classifying the various fairies they have identified at the bottom of their garden.
The planet is rotating with 70 some odd percent of water sloshing around on it and they think the currents are going to stop? They would also have to believe that the winds would somehow stop – which means no more day/night cycles to create convection currents.
“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.”
No, someone should take their little toy away from them so they can start observing the real world.
While the Earth rotates in the same direction and the continents are in the same place the major N. Atlantic currents (gulf & N.A. drift) will be there, cometh the CAGW or the new Ice Age.
What is changing is the latitude of the N. A. down-welling area, drifting further north during warming periods or going back south when the warming period is over, with periodicity of about 60 years. From this graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOq1.gif
assuming the data is good enough (within the reason), it can be seen that the N. Atlantic SST values (from which the AMO is derived) are virtually repeated with an uplift of 0.2C.
The AMOC carries heat from the equator to the pole. Not only that, it is driven by the temperature difference between equatorial waters and the polar ocean. The only way the flow can stop is by a physical barrier or by the temperature difference disappearing. How the latter will happen in a warming world is a mystery to anyone with an understanding of thermodynamics. It would fly in the face of everything we know about heat transfer.
If CO2 does warm the planet, it will warm the poles the most. This is because water is the major greenhouse gas. CO2 is just a bit player.
In regions where there is lots of water in the air, such as the tropics, more CO2 makes little to no difference.
However, at the poles, CO2 will have a much larger impact, because there is little water vapor in the air up there.
“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.”
This certainty hasn’t been happening since at least 1979. One reason that Arctic sea ice has been reduced overall is because of the strong Gulf Stream which keeps the UK, Iceland, and Scandinavia “warm” in the winter evidenced by this graphic/map as of Jan 4th 2017:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow.gif
Note how far north the Gulf Stream keeps the arctic ice free. During the last 40 years there is no hint, no evidence, of this push of warm water current subsiding.
That’s where the magical tipping points take over.
J Philip, I was thinking the same thing — the current seems stronger than ever. That’s very good news for NW Europe.
From “American Scientist” (2006) by Richard Seager
Source of Europe’s Mild Climate
Subtitle:
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth
From the article you just cited:
“In fact, England and France enjoy milder winters than eastern Canada in large part because prevailing winds at these latitudes blow from west to east over the comparatively warm ocean, thus allowing much of Europe to have a mild “maritime” climate.”
And why is the comparatively warm ocean warm? – Because of the Gulf Stream…
J. Philip Peterson
Read the entire article with an open mind and look at all the orange/red color on the image at 6:12 pm.
The Gulf Stream is a small part of all that warm water.
Gulf Stream ==> couple of degrees change in Europe
The Rest ==> 10/15 degrees change in Europe
Oh. Based on a model. That’s all right then. “It’s Even Worse Than We Thought” (TM)