From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
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:
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:
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.
Apparently stories like this are running AMOC
Thanks, Brian, that made me smile.
But you forgot the ba dum tsss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcYppAs6ZdI
Regards,
Bob
Just wait until a sharknado runs up the East coast.
Willis E. dismantled this nonsense yesterday. Turns out that their computer modeling involved Greenland ice melting producing 7 times the amount of ice/water in Greenland. Oh, and 17 centuries from now for the impending AMOC collapse. Climate Modelers – Please unplug your super computers and backway from your keyboards before someone gets hurt.
Too late . Thousands of jobs and lives changed because of climate alarmism.
People are becoming terrified….but will they be horrified?
_____________________________________________________________
Which leaves room for head lines that scream, “Worse than previously thought“
At some point, people will realize that since all the previous thoughts were wrong, the present thoughts must be wrong too.
The little boy who cried Wolf
“Follow the Psychist”.
“”Using computer models””
In the bin it goes, straight away
Curious, that the word ‘bin’, appears in binary! 🤔
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Why are so many surprised by change…
The temperature of the Earth and the CO2 content of the atmosphere were both PERFECT on January 1st, 1850.
98% of climate “scientists” agree.
You wouldn’t want to go against the consensus, would you?
Most definitely
Most defiently
Most deficiently
That’s part of the problem with those who have been suckered into believing everything these doomsayers come up with. The notion that nothing should ever change is made worse by the way the sciences are often taught. Even a brief study of geology, paleontology, evolutionary biology and even astronomy would easily show that the earth is ever-changing, and sometimes changes happen very quickly (like in a human lifetime).
The first three sciences show that there have been some truly massive upheavals in the earth’s history, some of which wiped out most living things.
And astronomy shows that there are plenty of other planets that are entirely lacking (as best as we can tell) most of the features that make this planet habitable by more advanced life forms. If you don’t want any changes, perhaps life on a tidally locked planet (one that is the right distance from its star to allow for liquid water, among other things) is a good place to look.
But then there’s climate “science” which preaches (and yes, that’s the correct term) that there is some perfect temperature on this planet, and that calamity will ensue with even the slightest deviation. And also that ocean currents, river flows, rain fall, snow fall, storms, etc, will never vary in the least. If the AGW alarmists want to trumpet “the science” then they also need to recognize and incorporate all of the branches of science! But of course, doing that would shoot a lot of holes in their official “science”.
I found the perfect temperature. It is Edmonton in July. Sorry for the rest of you.
One of the tenets to modern environmentalism, is that prior to man coming on the scene, nothing ever changed.
So all change must be caused by man, and is therefore evil.
The next glacial period is coming. When is the only question. It’s going to be cold and it’s probably going to last a very, very long time. Regards, Captain Obvious.
No Doubt it is coming, the heat distribution from below the Arctic shows an ominous looking change.
climate4you welcome
Gotta have fearporn to keep the people locked in fear. Any Climate BS /Agitprop needs to be measured by GOD’S WORD – GOD’s SWORD – here is what The Creator says about Climate Change.
GENESIS 8 : 22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Amen brother.
“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.”
BS
simulating… models… slow… sudden… calamitous
based on “warning signs in the salinity levels at the southern extent of the Atlantic Ocean”
brilliant science… not! They’d have more accurate predictions from the divination of the liver of a chicken.
Joe says:”They’d have more accurate predictions from the divination of the liver of a chicken.”
The divination was where they got the idea.
“over 100 years” That may be quick on geological time scales. On human time scales it’s something like 4-5 generations.
Even if it were to happen (it won’t), that’s plenty of time to adapt.
That calamitous event was due to them overrunning buffer space in memory.
For giblet divination, you need a licensed haruspex.
Their crystal balls have been dropped too many times.
Cracked, and very painful
Dropped it on their toesies, did they?
Amoc researchers run amok. Hey, the amoc has decreased by 15% since 1950. And when it disappears no more heat is coming from the tropics to Europe. But nevertheless Europe has warmed since 1950. Somebody slipped up there.
Don’t expect consistency from these dolts.
Let’s see. According to these people, the last time there was a big change in the AMOC was 10,000 years ago, when meltwater caused a temporary shutdown of the AMOC.
Hmmm. 10,000 years ago, that would be right smack dab in the middle of the Holocene Optimum.
So, if there was a lot of run off from Greenland 10K years ago, wouldn’t that imply that temperatures back then were a lot warmer than they are now?
And to think, our trolls have been quite vocal in proclaiming that the Holocene Optimum was no warmer than today.
Not quite. The sea level was still 12m lower than the present time according to reconstructions. There were still plenty of glaciers calving and ice shelves breaking off to take the heat out of the northern oceans.
Glaciation starts with the northern oceans getting hot enough in September to increase atmosphere water enough such that snowfall overtakes snow melt. That condition is about 200 years off but, once it starts, the permafrost moves south quite fast and the ice forming on the mountains slowly flow down into lower regions. The ocean level falls thereby increasing the temperature difference and advection between ocean surface and land surface, which has thick ice sheets from 40N to the Arctic Ocean. The melt begins three of four precession cycles later when there is enough glaciers calving and ice shelves breaking off to slow down the NH water cycle by cooling ocean surface. So snow fall becomes less than snow melt.
The climate modellers are trying to understand why snowfall is trending up using this nonsense about the AMOC slowing down. Everything has to be linked to CO2 to get funding. Science has left academia; replaced by government sponsorship to support global government.
What did Tim Ball write on the subject?
In terms of major runoff events around that time (or earlier, since they rather non-specifically use the phrase “more than 10000 years”), what would immediately come to mind would be Melt Water Pulse 1A or other similar events that occurred around the Bølling-Allerød interstadial and at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling period. To say that climatic conditions were a little different then would be an understatement, Earth was in the process of transitioning from a lengthy glacial period into the current interglacial period that we (thankfully) find ourselves in. Though, those would have been some “interesting” times to have lived in.
I find this to be suspect. Antisubmarine warfare platforms especially submarines need to know what the water profile is from surface to several thousand feet. Underwater sound is affected by salinity, temperature, distance. Knowing where hiding places (shadow zones) would be is a must. We dropped BT buoys to update the briefed BT graph every flight.
I’m sure way back in the 1970’s there were reports that they were worried about the imminent demise of the Gulfstream and the consequential European Ice age that would ensue. Then it started to warm up and everybody forgot about it. Perhaps they’ve started to worry about it again because it’s starting to cool down?
Not only occasionally cooler winter weather but upward trend in early season snowfall.
Eventually they will realise that they are witnessing how glaciation works. Absolutely nothing to do with CO2.
It would be impossible to get climate funding without demonising CO2 so there is no incentive to actually understand what is happening. However they only need to go back a million years and see reconstructions of sea level to observe this cycle repeating numerous times over that period. Going back 399k years is closest in terms of the precession cycle to now but there have been three other interglacials since that showing the interglacials and successive rapid fall in sea level is linked to the precession cycle.
Just a thought. During the Roman warming period, the Vikings settled in Greenland, and farmed it. So, obviously, it was a lot warmer, and therefore the ice sheets on Greenland must have melted significantly. With all that fresh water, why didn’t the AMOC collapse then?
Any suggestions?
Because the idea is complete and utter rubbish from start to finish? Like all climate enthusiasts, they just latch onto the first scary idea that supports their narrative and run with it. No comprehension of the process, of any other factors or causes; just a mish-mash of cherry picked observations and computer models to fill in the extensive holes. It’s yet another worthless pile of dung to justify grant money and get their names on a paper, no matter how appallingly bad.
bobpJones:
Actually, the Vikings settled in Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period, but your question is still valid for that period..
Someone must have got their wires crossed, as I’d read somewhere that they’d settled in the Roman warming period. Thanks for the correction 👍
Large rapid changes in loyalty….
to M. Obama?
“”BBC reveals 100 Women 2023: Celebrating 28 climate pioneers alongside Michelle Obama…””
https://www.bbcstudiospressroom.com/press/bbc-reveals-100-women-2023-celebrating-28-climate-pioneers-alongside-michelle-obama-aitana-bonmati-amal-clooney-and-america-ferrera/
I rather liked yesterday’s analysis of the “study” by Willis. He said their model poured in many times more fresh water than Greenland holds.
In fairness, did they add annual precipitation to the stored volume?
Do any of the so-called climate tipping points actually exist outside the world of models?
Evidence of existence of potential, like, say, from computer models, is not evidence of existence of outcome.
Yes. Humans are witnessing one right now. The area of ocean surface in the NH reaching the 30C limit is increasing at 2.5% per decade. The early season snowfall in the NH is trending strongly upward and NH has slight upward trend in total snow extent. I estimate the permafrost will be moving south again by 2200.
Once the ice starts accumulating again, It switch the land north of 40N to ice accumulation phase. The land accumulates ice meaning it never gets much warmer than 0C and the difference in elevation between the land ice and ocean surface increases resulting greater temperature difference due to the lapse rate. That accelerates the advection of ocean air to land causing snowfall to accelerate. Ocean levels fall at 4mm per year and ice mountains increase by 16mm per year. So far only Greenland exhibits the increase in elevation.
The recovery process out of glaciation is also a tipping point. The glacier calving and ice shelves break off to cool the NH ocean surface and so snow melt overtakes snowfall causing ocean levels to rise at 7mm per year resulting uplift on ice shelves that cause more to form icebergs and grounded icebergs eventually float and move further south to sustain the melt. The process goes on until the land loses most of its ice. This time around, Greenland;retained more ice than it did 400k years ago but less than the three intervening interglacials. .
There are good historical records of sea level that show this process but there is no funding for natural climate change. And I do not expect an apology from any government inside 100 years for fostering consensus on The Science™ carp.
Now hold on just a minute! These doofuses are blaming the melting of Arctic sea ice for reducing the salinity of seawater sufficient to kill AMOC … really?
They appear ignorant of a couple things (at least):
1) The volume of the sea ice in relation to the volume underneath the ice cap is negligible. ie typical average ice cap depth is less than 9 feet vs average depth of the Arctic Ocean of about 4,000 ft. If 100% of all sea ice melted instantaneously, it would only decrease the salinity of the Arctic Ocean by less than 0.23%, a clearly negligible change. And of course the Arctic ice pack will never instantaneously disappear unless a catastrophic meteor strike evaporates the ocean and a good deal of the crust.
2) Just where did all that salt go to that was lost from seawater ice when it formed? The ocean of course. So whatever miniscule variation in Arctic Ocean salt content may be, it is merely a recirculation process that endlessly repeats with each annual seasonal change in sea ice pack extent. Without killing off AMOC which of course takes place throughout the northern hemispheric extent of the Atlantic Ocean, which is far greater than the area affected by sea ice variations in the Arctic Ocean.
btw the volume of the Arctic Ocean is 18.75 million cubic km … whereas the volume of the North Atlantic Ocean is approx. 155 million cubic km – a ratio of 1:9.
How are human beings still here after the Holocene optimum when summer sea ice regularly all-but disappeared.!
The logic: Negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions cause the MOC to slow down, but rising CO2 forcing is modeled to increase positive NAO states, so it should in theory speed up the MOC.
A slower MOC is associated with a warmer AMO and a warmer Arctic Ocean, because the Gulf Stream doesn’t slow down when the MOC is slower.
The Atlantic circulation currents vary in speed on a seasonal and occasionally slightly different cycle. No-one has yet advanced a solid theory as to exactly why this happens and, until they do, I’ll take the ‘explanations’ for present and past variations with a large degree of sceptcism. It’s all guessing games with no proof.
Slow MOC events are clearly during negative NAO episodes, summer 2007, both ends of 2010, summer 2012, March 2013, etc, and the MOC weakening trends follow the negative NAO regimes in 1995-1999 and in 2005-2014. The MOC has been slightly faster again since 2014 due to a positive NAO regime.
Yes. But all you are doing is explaining a correlation, not causation. When someone pins down the exact causes, then colour me interested – until then, however…
The negative NAO episodes and regimes driving it all are caused by weaker indirect solar forcing.
The negative NAO episodes happen at the same time as weaker solar intensity? That’s still a correlation – can you actually prove causation?
I cannot prove it, but when the correlations number in hundreds or thousands of events, the effect can be said to be real, and warrants investigation into the mechanism.
‘Effects on winter circulation of short and long term solar wind changes’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117713005802
The weather, climate, and causes therein are whatever the Marxists/alarmists say/want it to be and the narrative is trumpeted by the MSM. People must be getting wise by now.
They are but it’ll take a serious exposé of the ‘university conveyor belt of shite studies’ to get any strong pushback against the sheer waste of money and resources in this useless and damaging circus of ineptitude.
The fact that the UK Met Office is downplaying the gravity of the situation by claiming such a major change is unlikely in this century is a reminder that the entire forecast is exaggerated. Have the BBC of The Guardian made a big deal out of the prediction yet? If not, it’s a guarantee there’s nothing to it after all; the whole thing is only a remote possibility.
Some years back an article, mainly about Greenland, quite possibly published on WUWT, said that the ice core data from Greenland showed that the upper (approx.) 50% of depth was at most 4000 years old, i.e. that it was from snow deposited during what is officially called the neo-glacial stage of the Holocene. Earlier, a researcher in Norway (I believe) found that several glacial advances and retreats have occurred in the fjords over this time, leading to official recognition of the neo-glacial stage.
Does anyone know if the above information about Greenland ice is considered to be correct?
Pretty sure it is. Greenland forms a shallow bowl of rock; ice from the last glacial period fills most of the bowl to the rim and there is a thin layer of ice from the previous interglacial in the bottom of the bowl.
All this has been confirmed by dating core samples.
The ice above the rim is far more recent (all from this interglacial) but, because of the mechanism that compresses the ice and pushes it out just above the rim of the bowl to calve into the sea, it is impossible to say how much has melted at which time and how much has calved due to the mechanical compression of the ice.
The glacier flow is also very strange. The ice in the centre of Greenland piles high and pushes the peripheral ice uphill some distance then over a ridge of mountains and down to the sea. It is going to melt in a strange way. Probably it will create a huge lake with a thick ice bottom. When fully melted it will resemble a ring of islands of various sizes. Who can find us a map?
Well during the last interglacial that’s probably what happened. The evidence of a thin layer of ice from the previous interglacial indicates that, even at it’s coldest, it was warmer than this interglacial and this interglacial, even at its warmest, was unable to melt through the ice built up during the glaciation, so is much cooler. I’m fascinated by what the Greenland ice is telling us, its pretty amazing.
Gulf Stream safe if wind blows and Earth turns, av Carl Wunsch.Letter to the scientific journal Nature. 2004.Your News story “Gulf Stream probed for early warnings of system failure” 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.
Strange that all these new “tipping points” are in the future while expired “tipping points” are forgotten as if they never were never projected.
Who needs reality when you can build a model and predict whatever serves your purpose? In science a model is an hypothesis, not an observation, but the global warming fanatics want us to believe their model outputs are incontrovertible facts about the future. A bunch of scattered chicken bones would be equally informative.
This churning helps to distribute energy around the Earth and modulates the impact of human-caused global heating.
They forgot to add ‘..and every other cause of global temperature change including the much more influential natural causes and both positive and negative heat exchanges.’
I think you meant to say “last Glacial Period”, the 2.56 million-year ice age, named the Quaternary Glaciation, the Earth is in is ongoing. The Earth will be in this ice age until all natural ice melts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation