A recent CNN headline, “Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists“ misleads its readers into believing that a collapse of a critical Atlantic Ocean current is pending. This is false.
The CNN article opens by saying:
A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others.
The CNN story is referring to a study in Science Advances, titled Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course.
Dozens of other media outlets picked up the story, also running frightening headlines, all blaming climate change. For example:
Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds, (The Guardian)
AMOC current from ‘Day After Tomorrow’ is on path to collapse: Study (USA Today)
The crucial tipping point scientists say could cause Atlantic Ocean collapse (The Washington Post)
This episode is yet another “tipping point” scare for the ocean currents, and one that has been debunked multiple times at Climate Realism.
Despite the title, rather than being “physics-based” the research published is actually “climate model-based,” describing an outcome projected by a single climate model’s calculation for the distant future for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC). The AMOC is also part of the well-known “Gulf Stream” current. Here’s what the AMOC pattern of currents looks like.
However, behind the scary headlines pushed by the mainstream media is this one immutable fact buried in the study: the supposed AMOC tipping point will not occur until 1758 years from now, in the year 3782 AD. This is clearly shown in figure 1A from the paper which is reproduced in Figure 2 below.
In other words, even if the study turns out to be true, there is absolutely no threat during lifetime of any person living today, or their children, or grandchildren. Or their great, great, great, great grandchildren, many generations in the future. Yet the mainstream media irresponsibly reports results of this study as if the collapse of the AMOC is just around the corner.
The reporting on the study is also irresponsible for failing to acknowledge the recent research suggesting that AMOC has been speeding up or strengthening in recent years, as described in a 2018 study.
The Scientific Advances’ study’s conclusion is predicated on a single climate model, the Community Earth System Model (CESM), projecting far into the future and it’s also predicated on an amount of ice melt that has not happened in our lifetimes. Even then, the CESM had to have its pump primed with unrealistic meltwater data in order for the researchers to come to the conclusion they got. What they did was to run the model, then add modeled freshwater very gradually to the modeled North Atlantic, presumably simulating a melting of the Greenland ice which might shut down the AMOC.
There’s only one problem; the amount of freshwater from melting that they injected into the model is about five times the actual amount of ice available in Greenland to melt.
The study reports that 14,629,305 cubic kilometers of modeled fresh water were added to the model. Yet, the National Snow and Ice Data Center says: (bold mine)
The Greenland Ice Sheet contains about 2.9 million cubic kilometers (0.7 million cubic miles) of ice. The ice sheet extends about 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles), covering 80 percent of the world’s largest island, and is equivalent to about three times the size of Texas. It contains about 2.9 million cubic kilometers (696,000 cubic miles) of ice.
Simple math shows the water volume inflation factor: 14,629,305/2,900,00 = 5.044.
So, the researchers used an amount of melted ice that was impossible to occur because that much ice doesn’t exist in Greenland. This sort of irresponsible use of a climate model seems to have as its related goals – to grab headlines, inspire fear, and motivate government action.
Of course, the media completely missed the facts about the timing in the distant future and water volume used to goose the model, that completely negate the study and render it moot, but instead blasted out scary headlines as if doom were imminent. Journalism is supposed to check facts, as Climate Realism does daily. Instead, they rushed to publication and in the process published blatantly false information and tried to blame present day climate change.
The media also missed the fact that about 12,500 years ago the AMOC slowed down and in fact the planet’s weather and temperature changed during that time. The Younger Dryas Climate Event occurred about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago. Many of the climate changes related to that event were likely a response to increased freshwater discharge to the North Atlantic and the reduction in AMOC strength. That basically signaled the end of the most recent ice age, beginning the time when Earth became more habitable for humans, and sedentary agriculture began. Shortly after that, in geologic time the blinking of an eye, the first nascent, large-scale civilizations began developing.
This all occurred well before climate change was even a twinkle in the eye of climate catastrophists and was a completely natural event unrelated to modern day concerns.
On the status of the AMOC, the science itself, and the press reporting on it, are both bipolar. Some people in the climate debate seem to believe that “the science is settled,” yet every few months the press bombards the public with stories diametrically opposed to what they reported was occurring with the AMOC just a few months prior. Heartland Institute president James Taylor tracked news articles on the topic over the last few years, compiling a list of dozens of news stories published since 2020, all citing research on the AMOC. But the research is contradictory. Studies, sometimes published within a year of each other, sometimes within the same year, come to contradictory conclusions. Some studies say the AMOC is slowing down and about to collapse, a tipping point for worsening extreme weather, others say the AMOC is speeding up which will lead to runaway weather. The reporting swings back and forth just a quickly, reporting diametrically opposed results as if both could be true.
Concerning the AMOC, not only is the science not settled, but the media doesn’t have a clue concerning how to even determine if the science they are reporting on is grounded in fact and correct, or if the what they are writing about it is being reported accurately, or whether the conclusion of a particular study fits within the overall science on the AMOC. The reporting on this new study is yet another shameful example of the media putting their climate narrative scare stories ahead of actual facts: the AMOC is speeding up, or its declining, but in either case its bad for the world and governments need to act to prevents it, as if keeping the AMOC constant is even possible.
CNNs’ circulation is in danger of collapsing ?
😉
I thought it already had. If it weren’t for airports, would there be anyone watching CNN?
“Some studies say the AMOC is slowing down and about to collapse, a tipping point for worsening extreme weather, others say the AMOC is speeding up which will lead to runaway weather. The reporting swings back and forth just a quickly, reporting diametrically opposed results as if both could be true.”
I believe that is know as Schrodinger’s Meridional Overturning Circulation.
” What they did was to run the model, then add modeled freshwater very gradually to the modeled North Atlantic, presumably simulating a melting of the Greenland ice which might shut down the AMOC.”
The Greenland ice melt was only one component of the freshwater flux. It included increased precipitation, and entry at the boundaries (eg rivers, Indian Ocean). They say
” The AMOC is particularly sensitive to the ocean’s freshwater forcing, either through the surface freshwater flux (e.g., precipitation) or by input of fresh water due to river runoff or ice melt (e.g., from the Greenland Ice Sheet). “
So “So, the researchers used an amount of melted ice that was impossible to occur because that much ice doesn’t exist in Greenland.” is wrong. They weren’t talking just about the ice in Greenland.
Yeah, they were talking about another stupid and erroneous computer model used to spread fear.
Like they always do.
Nick 14 million km³ is 5 times the amount of water frozen on Greenland! You can’t handwave that. And water from the Indian Ocean! This is already warmed up.
The issue isn’t warmth, but salinity. And the big source of fresh water is just rain. Over the whole ocean.
Since the water needed for rain comes from evaporation from the ocean’s surface, it is impossible for increased rain to have a dramatic impact on surface salinity.
Half the Antarctic would help. 😉
So “So, the researchers used an amount of melted ice that was impossible to occur because that much ice doesn’t exist in Greenland.” is wrong. They weren’t talking just about the ice in Greenland.
I think you are still wrong.
They are off by FIVE Greenland ice sheets. You are projecting increased precipitation to deliver that amount above complete melting of the ice sheet. Which model is projecting that much increase in precipitation?
(If Greenland ice is currently roughly stable as a first order approximation, then current annual precipitation over Greenland is already included in the annual meltwater. You are predicting a giant delta for precipitation!)
Yes. They added 14.6 million cubic kilometers of fresh water. The Greenland ice contains 2.9 million. The rest came from river runoff and rain. So the question for Nick is:
Let’s suppose that the Greenland ice caps totally melt. Are you saying that there will be an addition of 11.7 million cubic kilometers from river runoff and rain?
Where has this been forecast, by who, and on what grounds?
This isn’t science or even literary criticism, this is the parable of the loaves and the fishes rewritten in a modern religious context.
Parable of the fishes…excellent.
It isn’t a question for me. It is a nquestion for the paper. Have you read it?
In fact there is a whole literature about this modelling. Their forcing is quite modest.
Its “climate ” modelling
ie IT IS A JOKE and a FARCE.!
Yes, I have read it. Not the supplementary materials, however. I don’t see in what I have read any account of where the fresh water is to come from. There is a section in ‘Materials and Methods’ on ‘Freshwater Transport’, but (unless I misunderstood or missed something) it doesn’t provide that.
The paper appears to explore the properties of one particular model in some depth. It shows that on this model, if you increase the flow of fresh water to very high levels, you get in a period of centuries, starting about 800 years from now, a given result. A tipping point is reached about 1700 years from now.
However there isn’t, as far as I have seen, anything you could call a fresh water budget. That is, anything quantified explaining where the fresh water which the study applies to the model is going to be sourced from and what is going to have to happen in the climate to produce it.
One should not perhaps be too critical of the authors, they are not predicting this is going to happen, which is what the budget would be needed for. They are only saying that if this amount of water appeared from somewhere, perhaps by divine intervention, the result would be a collapse of the AMOC. Yes, maybe it would. So what?
If we are interested in the real world, not so much the properties of this particular model, then we need a complete account of the changes which will deliver all this fresh water to the required places. Then we can start to see how plausible this is as a scenario. For me, predictions of doom from possible developments in a chaotic system a thousand years from now, when the likelihood of these developments has not been quantified, are not very worrying. Its not like the movement of astronomical bodies following precise laws. The level of uncertainty about any of this happening in the real world is huge. Not quantified however in the paper, which is understandable if all you are doing is investigating a model.
The paper has no conceivable bearing on any policy choices about energy. These are being made right now on the basis of lots of half baked ideas, false assumptions and non-sequiturs in rationales. The coverage of the paper in the mainstream press was thus very misleading. To put it mildly.
Its part of a pattern of putting out wildly improbable doom scenarios, with the implication, usually not stated explicitly, that this supports the case for (eg) moving power generation to wind, or cars to batteries. The idea in the press seems to be that if you have enough alarming doom laden scenarios you can get people into a state of mind where they will accept idiotic and impossible measures which could have no measurable effects on emissions or climate even were they practicable.
Well said michel!
“However there isn’t, as far as I have seen, anything you could call a fresh water budget.”
When the world’s human emission of CO2 was cut by 6% in 2020 due to the covid shutdowns the CO2 level kept rising at the same rate. The rising level of CO2 is probably due to increased solar energy over the last 80 years increasing ocean temperatures which releases CO2 from the oceans.
The oceans hold 60-70 times as much CO2 as the air.
“a whole literature about this modelling”
literature? modeling? how about data and real science? you know, theories, testing, proof
Hugh Hefner made quite a good living from literature about models.
I always enjoyed that literature.
I only read it for the articles.
Boiling oceans could cause such a delta. Oh, wait, that was just UN hype.
All the steam from the boiling oceans will be good for my stuffed sinuses! 🙂
“You are predicting a giant delta for precipitation”
Greenland is a small part of the catchment. But the main catchment is the ocean itself.
Before there can be increased rainfall, there first has to be increased evaporation.
Increased evaporation increases salinity, increased rainfall decreases salinity. Net result, no change.
NS, you are apparently geography challenged. The A in AMOC is the Atlantic Ocean—more specifically, the North Atlantic Ocean. Your comment attempting to defend the indefensible specifically cites the Indian Ocean (the old melting Himalaya glaciers thing?). Huh?
They specifically mentioned the Indian ocean several times. As they said, the Atlantic is net evaporating. It has to get fresh water across the boundaries.
But the main thing is that the 5x arithmetic is spurious. Greenland is a minor freshwater source.
I love the way Nick brings up absurdities in an effort to defend the indefensible. Then when confronted with the impossibility of the things he lists, he jumps back and says we shouldn’t blame him, he’s just quoting other people.
A scientist checks what he quotes, before he passes it on.
A propagandist takes no responsibility for the things he says and writes.
Looks like Nick has firmly placed himself into the latter camp.
I’ll defend Nick. Water from Indian Ocean does get to the Atlantic. Not very fast, but this scare is on the scale of 3,000 years anyway.
No, it wasn’t Greenland. The researchers just pulled the number out of their @ss.
“It included increased precipitation, and entry at the boundaries (eg rivers, Indian Ocean).”
So , where does that water come from ?
Oh , from evaporation , mainly from oceans!
So no net change .
Or , unicorn pee ?
Cmon man !
Mainly from oceans. But not necessarily the Atlantic.
For this to be true, rainfall rates would have to pick up by a factor of several hundred thousand. With almost all of it falling on the N. Atlantic.
well, that COULD happen- alarmists might say 🙂
They are talking about a TOTALLY FICTICIOUS piece of anti-science GARBAGE.
Just the sort of thing Nick would support.
The Indian Ocean is a boundary of the North Atlantic?
Fig 1 of this article:
And where, pray tell, does this extra precipitation come from other than their imagination?
Silver lining to a dark cloud. This alarmist episode is so absurdly ridiculous that even WaPo has to be embarrassed. Skeptics can use it for years to show how poor ‘climate science’ actually is, and how poorly it then gets reported.
Sort of like the polar bear alarm, which ignored the fact that polar bears take in about 75-80% of their total annual calories during the spring seal whelping season. Not even Al Gore claimed there would not be spring Arctic sea ice after the long Arctic winter.
“the media doesn’t have a clue concerning how to even determine if the science they are reporting on is grounded in fact and correct, or if the what they are writing about it is being reported accurately, or … ” if the journalists writing their articles are all AI.
I noted on another blog that AI researchers are working hard to eliminate hallucinations in their software.
So they will soon be completely useless for “journalism.”
The bot chatCpt 3.5 hallucinated an answer to a question that I asked it that didn’t seem correct so I asked it for references and it supplied me with a bunch of fake references that didn’t exist.
Story tip – The Great Electric Vehicle Con – American Thinker
Tesla sales fell by about 10% in California last year.
Maybe or maybe not. Skeptical of these supposed models. Jaded by all the false flags, scare tactics, the questionable climate scientists who have flagrantly published studies that are flawed and unwilling to share their data. Mann that sure bugs me.
Did a little research to add some color in addition to the impossible freshwater component modeled ridiculous millennia out,
The climate model used in this absurd paper was CESM from alarmist US NCAR. There are actually now two versions, CESM1 and CESM 2. Their TCR are respectively 2.0 and 2.1C (observational is about 1.3) Their ECS are respectively 4 and 5C (observational is about 1.7). CESM run very hot.
We know NCAR thinks things are getting ‘worse’—keeps the money coming in.
Thanks for the insightful reporting. It is really becoming laughable how the Alarmist media seeks to generate hysteria over every event and every study. I got quite a chuckle when you pointed out the dreaded event wouldn’t be seen until my great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren were born. Also that the computer model was using five times the input of fresh water that Greenland has available in its massive icecap.
Rather than computer models, I wish we could spend a stray trillion or two of these dollars we are squandering on (deleted raving) upon actual research. Every time they actually send submersibles down to study the doings of the depths they are astounded by what they learn, and that MOSAiC expedition that spent a winter locked in the sea-ice
discovered mind-blowing things that I never see the media reporting.
My latest interest has been sea-bed lava flows, and how the heck the system handles that heat. Sadly, with the lunatics running the asylum, the economy will likely soon have no trillions to spend on such fascinating things.
Yes Indeed. There is so much real science out there waiting to be done that might greatly add to are attempts to understand all these mechanisms. We live in an age where the “opportunity cost” is staggering. Trillions being flushed down the toilet everywhere you look. And not limited to climate science by any means.
The opportunity cost of taking a left turn down the road to fascism or socialism ( or some horrible “new” iteration breed through the social pathologies rearing their ugly head once again, let us just say dictatorship) ; well it is hard to even fathom. Less than a year and we will know if there is any hope.
Fascism, socialism, not all that much difference.
CS, for what its worth I follow you farm/daycare blog. Sea ice and ‘Ralph’ were the beginning, now mostly how you handle wee folks like my grandkids.
With respect to geothermal deep sea heat input, don’t think there is a lot there to learn. The deep sea has a remarkably constant temperature and salinity. If geothermal input mattered that would not be observed. Translation, BIG Ocean heat capacity.
Let’s see… after glacial max 20,000years ago, 55 million km³ of ice melted …and …uh …the Overturning Circulation uh started up!
They should put that in their computer model and smoke it.
… Climate Change Is Not*
End of story.
*There is zero data showing a meaningful shift in the climate zones of the earth. ZERO. All weather phenomena observed are still well within the bounds of natural variation for every climate zone on the earth.
The warming that began almost 200 years ago is completely benign and is not driving any shifts in the climate zones of the earth.
The climate warming at the end of the Little Ice Age was very good for life on Earth. More plants could grow, more animals could feed on them, and human famines declined drastically.
Bogus studies are deliberately created so that incredulous media know-nothings can breathless proclaim night after night that we are all about to die unless we turn over all power to the far left.
One of many things COVID-19 mitigation highlighted was the fact that humanity has moved from fighting real enemies to fighting imagined enemies conjured by sophisticated (and thereby ineffectual) computer modelling. The UN and WHO were complicit in this neglect of prior intelligence.
Regardless of whether or not society is now full of inadequate leaders at all levels or just a very poor selection to choose from, when it comes to battle planning the inscrutable might suggest that you identify your enemy and its nature at the very beginning of planning. We were misled from the very beginning of SARS-CoV-2 just as we have been misled by the Hockey Stick an implement required for ice bound sport and not for serious scientific application in any situation, let alone to reinforce a potentially poor selection of candidate for the role of enemy number one – CO2 – or to thwart any second thoughts there might have been of looking elsewhere. Just as with COVID-19 the war cabinet didn’t pay any attention to the fact they couldn’t dive into the deep end without drowning and the UN seeks to double down on its incompetency with ever greater powers.
These continual repetitions of mistakes are the acts of a bunch of immature actors who need an infinite number of ‘takes’ before they are ever going to get their lines right. Best we shut them all down and save ourselves a lot of heartache and unwise expenditure. At the same time inviting a lot of other problems to occupy such confused minds simply conflates an already unsupportable situation.
Stop the lazy science and lazy scientists and start banging some academic heads together and begin a campaign to do stuff properly, correctly, and with an explanation even primary school kids can understand. We know that CO2 is not Planet Earth’s thermostatic control and so let us hear from the scientists who already understand and appreciate that and what they believe is a realistic path to take to ensure we have sufficient power generation capacity for the future without telling lies..
It is unusual but very encouraging to find so much common sense in one small piece of prose. Thank you for supporting logic and critical thought. I agree full heartedly with all of your thoughts. You must keep speaking up so there is more logic and less propaganda in the public arena.
Solar output has increased over the last 80 years, warming the oceans, which have 70 times as much CO2 as the air, causing them to release CO2. When human emissions of CO2 dropped in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic by 6%, the CO2 level kept rising at the same rate.
I think the author means “the end of the last Glacial Period”. The Earth is still in a 2.56 million-year ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation which won’t end until all natural ice melts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
I thought it was when there are no longer year-round ice caps at the poles. I’m not sure all ice on the surface must melt to say we are out of the ice age but not my area of expertise so I may be wrong.