Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute, if we don’t curb global warming, a large scale “Day After Tomorrow” style cooling event could strike in as little as two decades.
Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse
A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say
Damian Carrington
Environment editor @dpcarrington
Fri 6 Aug 2021 01.08 AESTClimate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.
The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.
Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
…
The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.
“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse
The abstract of the study;
Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 680–688 (2021)Cite this article
Abstract
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the currently attained strong to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain. Here, a robust and general early-warning indicator for forthcoming critical transitions is introduced. Significant early-warning signals are found in eight independent AMOC indices, based on observational sea-surface temperature and salinity data from across the Atlantic Ocean basin. These results reveal spatially consistent empirical evidence that, in the course of the last century, the AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01097-4
Sadly Boers’ study is paywalled, which I find a little surprising.
I mean if you wanted to warn people about an imminent comet strike, would you charge money for people to read your warning, or would you forget self interest and try to spread the news as far and fast as possible, in the hope of producing a response?
So why would anyone charge money for people to see their warning about what they claim is an imminent global climate catastrophe?
The arrogance of man……
“So why would anyone charge money for people to see their warning about what they claim is an imminent global climate catastrophe?”
Because (a) it isn’t going to happen for a while; and (b) because you don’t want many people to be able to dredge up a copy of it 20 years from now to point out it didn’t happen?
A. It’s just climate porn
And then
They’re covered then.
FYI the link is to Guardian Article. Surprise!
Who measured it 1,600 years ago? Michael Mann and crew trashed the reputation of the entire paleo-climate field so you can’t believe paleo studies anymore.
They really weren’t believable in the first place.
If global warming causes cooling does global cooling cause warming?
How do you tell cooling is from global warming or from global cooling?
Maybe someone will ask nice Prof. Rahmstorf about this conundrum.
Any scientist who considers a spread of two decades to several centuries “science” shouldn’t be employed. We expect more of grad students.
With error bars from 300yrs ago to the year 4000AD
How do they get away with such intellectual slovenliness by their peers and why have we allowed science get to such a sorry state?
That was rhetorical, yes?
Seems like we have entered a time warp. My Neanderthal genes are now picking up the scent of EEMH (Cro-magnon man) around the bathtub known as the Baltic sea. Fear and excitement over exotic interbreeding is overwhelming. I feel like a moose listening to Jimmy Durante, do I want to go or do I want to stay. I know, I’ll tell them I have a headache and they will leave me alone…yes, that’s the plan!
It’s 48 thousand years later…I can’t believe the absolute garbage those folks are allowed to generate…collapse of civilization, anyone?
Yes, rhetorical. I barely have words to express my disgust.
Whatever the problem, it can be solved with a donation from each and every Earth resident of $40,000, ±$1,000,000.
Yep, you’ve got the right idea.
The prediction is fool proof. He has it both ways. It is only a matter of timing ..
The credulous general public are happy to accept the most outrageous nonsense when they read, “science says”. Now that the planet is obviously cooling again (naturally, of course) they need to rework “climate change” a bit. Yep, timing is everything.
I think they would have you believe the following: Bad man-made global warming crowds out and kills the natural good global warmth… and then when the bad global warming succeeds, it kills itself and all we are left with is global cooling.
There has been speculation on this occurring since I was in high school. I remember talking about it with my biology teacher in ’91.
Still waiting…
Any cooling that we now see will be attributed to an AMOC slowdown caused by our use of fossil fuels.
From the Guardian
“Scientists know that Amoc has slowed since 2004, when instruments were deployed at sea to measure it. ”
From researchers
“We conclude that the observed AMOC trend is not significantly different (p> 0.01) from plausible estimates of internal variability. Detecting the influence of external climate forcings on the AMOC will require more than one decade of continuous observations.”*
And the rest is based on reconstructions by activists.
*https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL059473
“Scientists know that Amoc has slowed since 2004, when instruments were deployed at sea to measure it. ”
Yet again. It’s a syndrome, but I don’t know what to call it. Just because you suddenly started measuring something, doesn’t mean any measurement is now “unprecedented”.
I made a tongue-in-cheek comment on another thread:
“Can you imagine when the very first temperature measurement was taken? It was both the hottest and coldest on record, EVAH!! It must have sent the civilized world into utter turmoil!”
Riiiggghhhttt! If we don’t stop warming….. we’ll have cooling. I don’t know much German but I believe “Potsdam” might be a German term for a state of imbecilic delirium.
When you see someone say “if we don’t curb global warming, a large scale “Day After Tomorrow” style cooling event could strike in as little as two decades.”, then you know that something has gone very wrong deep in their brain.
The only sensible policy then would be to pump 100 × as much CO2 into the atmosphere to turn the control up high.. Cutting back on CO2 sounds risky if you still believe in your precious control knob theory.
Don’t you PIKERS realize that the civilization -destroying anti CO2 policy is totally undermined by this idea. If such exteme cold happenings can just come out of the blue, we would best keep optimum wealth generation à la free enterprise going so we can best cope with everything in a crap-shoot climate.
We may also best forget about PIKO-PINKO new Resets after we’ve warmed you all up across the pond.
How many years have they been predicting the imminent collapse of the Gulf Stream?
They seem to love the word “collapse”. I think these people secretly get a sexual buzz out of talking catastrophe and doom. After nearly 50 years of listening to these squealing kiddies, it just reminds me of preteen girls on a playground.
“So why would anyone charge money for people to see their warning about what they claim is an imminent global climate catastrophe? ”
And do you also expect to receive a ree copy of the latest thriller from the NYT best seller list?
From the article: “Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse
A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say”
Such Hubris!
“Buy an electric car, save the Gulf Stream!”
So let’s get every power boat owner in Miami out there in the Gulf Stream, drop anchor, point the boat in the proper direction, and hit full throttle! That’ll save us!
“…an almost complete loss of stability…” and yet everything goes on like normal with no noticeable change in the climate.
Potsdam Institute, another agency that needs its taxpayer funding eliminated.
If this old Earth had a “tipping point” it would have already tipped at least millions and probably billions of years ago and we wouldn’t even be sitting here to be able to talk about it (since every “tipping point” trumpeted by the Warmunists means the The End Of All Life As We Know It!™)
What to do – what to do? If it stops in the next two weeks, or 20 years or perhaps centuries from now, we’ll stand behind it and push – yeah that’s it we’ll push.
It has to be repeated time and again, “Climate Change policy has nothing to do with Climate, and everything to do with policy change.”
Anyone who thinks climate change has anything to do with actual climate simply isn’t paying attention.
It was inevitable wasn’t it . . . global warming is the root cause of global cooling.
Shout it from the hilltops!
The PIK in Potsdam is just continuation of the Stasi Training Academy, that was there until 1990.
“The “Academy of the Ministry for State Security” was created on June 20, 1965, taking over the former “School of the Ministry for State Security” that had existed near Potsdam in Eiche since 1955. It was called the “Academy of Law in Potsdam” (Juristische Hochschule Potsdam, or JHS for short) and reported directly to the Minister for State Security. Its teaching and research operations were restructured and expanded while retaining the basic on-site and distance learning curricula.”
https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/standortgeschichte-golm/mfs-academy-of-law
I suspect much of the Stasi Academy staff ended up at PIK after the climate scam took hold in the 1990’s and those Academy folks found new jobs at PIK, and still under Russian control.
So, they are planning to stop the Coriolis?
They have an inflated opinion of themselves and their abilities.
No, I’m not going to make the comparison. I thought better of it.
Famous geologist James Hutton was want to instruct that “The present is the key to the past.” We can assume that the inverse is true also, i.e. “The past is the key to the present as well as the future.”
Did the Gulf stream shut down during any of the recent-past warming events such as the Roman Warm Period? Is there even any evidence that it shut down during the Holocene Optimum? If not, then why should we believe that the next 20 years will be any different?
Correct During this interglacial SL was up to 2 meters higher.
Yes, I think the Gulf Stream shutting down would be unprecedented.
It’s really laughable, given the Earth’s history with CO2, but this scaremongering stupidity gets spread around the world and scares a lot of people who don’t read WUWT. I’ve seen several articles over the last day or two pushing this particular climate change propaganda.
It seems that the propaganda mill is ramping up for the anticipated COP 26.
Well, if the alarmists predict everything then one of them will be right from time to time.
No, they’d still somehow manage to get them all wrong.
They have (unintentionally) obviated their claim to Science! (as in she blinded me with…) because by predicting all that and a bag of chips, they have made their very theory unfalsifiable, and that is the opposite of science.
“The CMIP5 data are publicly available at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip5/‘
Models all the way down.
Supplementary Information “Model with critical Transition” also “autocorrelated noise forcing”
Where does the heat go?
When that stupid movie came out, scientists piled-on to attack it. Carl Wunsch went so far as to write a letter to Nature which read,
“Sir —Your News story “Gulf Stream probed for early warnings of system failure” (Nature 427, 769; 2004) discusses what the climate in the south of England would be like “without the Gulf Stream”.
Sadly, this phrase has been seen far too often, usually in newspapers concerned with the unlikely possibility of a new ice age in Britain triggered by the loss of the Gulf Stream.
European readers should be reassured that the Gulf Stream’s existence is a consequence of the large-scale wind system over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the nature of fluid motion on a rotating planet. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.
Real questions exist about conceivable changes in the ocean circulation and its climate consequences. However, such discussions are not helped by hyperbole and alarmism. The occurrence of a climate state without the Gulf Stream any time soon — within tens of millions of years has a probability of little more than zero.”
Another reviewer likened it to “a cheap thrill ride” which “many weak-minded people will jump on and stay on for the rest of their lives”.
But Stephan Rahmsdorf defended it – saying, “Nevertheless, a major change in ocean circulation is a risk with serious and partly unpredictable consequences, which we should avoid. . . . “
It seems that Nature, Rahmsdorf and PIK believe in the efficacy of “The Big Lie”. So, 17 years later they are still repeating it.
https://scitechdaily.com/ocean-current-system-that-influences-weather-patterns-globally-seems-to-be-approaching-a-tipping-point/
See comments.