The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has long been a focal point in climate change discussions, with many researchers and media outlets warning of its potential collapse as a major climate "tipping point." However, a groundbreaking study published in Nature Communications challenges these assertions, revealing that the perceived weakening of the AMOC may be nothing more than an artifact of data misinterpretation.
The Florida Current: A Key Component of the AMOC The Florida Current, a swift ocean current that flows from the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico and then northwa...
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A general comment to the topic, not the restricted post. The modeled AMOC decline scare has been such a ‘definitive’ part of long established climate alarm lore that science actually did something about it. Oceanographers established the RAPID array of moored buoys entirely across the Atlantic at 26.5N. In all the years of its existence, it has showed some AMOC fluctuations depending on depth, but no trend either way. Data is easily available via googlefu.
Sort of like knowing USGCN is hopelessly corrupted by siting issues, so establish pristine triple redundant USCRN—which shows no US warming since its inception.
When climate science accepts model output as data, and bad data as good,
then when real science provides a different unalarming answer those new high quality facts get suppressed.
All data that fails to support the preferred alarmist narrative of AGW, is suppressed and knowingly ignored.
Jolly hockey sticks,
oh and don’t forget to submit those research grants early, only 57 days to go before
E-day (election day)
Unforeseen/not-though-of effects occur.
Years ago an engineer told the story of trying to do the right thing to prevent pushing on switch from affecting an output. IIRC used a rod made of Teflon, but it had the opposite effect, something to do with buildup of charge.
I note the paper ignores the North Equatorial Current, which gets heat from the sun and the South Equatorial Current. It also feeds heat, probably much more heat, into the Gulf Stream, than the Florida Current. Because it can collect far more heat than the Florida Current can get from the Gulf. Looks like data cherry-picking to me.
According to the TropicalTidbits.com site, the CDAS Nino 3.4 index for Sep. 7, has fallen to (-) 0.6 Deg. C. and is now in La Nina territory, which presages lower global temperatures..
The site also shows cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic.
It does not appear that that a weakening AMOC is a myth
A question about the graphic as we can all see it.
The white circle in the legend for LADCP/XBT station at 27*N isn’t on the graphic unless it’s the “spotlight” that seems to from the satellite?
PS No, I not a VIP member. I would be if I wasn’t retired and the love of my life, my wife, didn’t already … what’s the word? … complain? object? … to our internet/cable/phone bill already.
The article discussed here last month:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/03/technical-university-munich-why-we-cant-predict-the-timing-of-climate-tipping-points/
states:
“””
In conclusion, we showed that the uncertainties discussed in this work are too large to allow for reliable estimates of the tipping time of major Earth system tipping elements, including the AMOC, the polar ice sheets, or tropical rainforests, based on extrapolating results from historical data. We emphasize that these uncertainties, originating from underlying modeling or mechanistic assumptions as well as from the used empirical data, need to be taken into account and propagated thoroughly before attempting to estimate a future tipping time of any potential Earth system tipping element.
“””
Which basically says that the AMOC tipping point studies did not do their math correctly and underestimated uncertainty in their statements.
Rhamstorf and Co´s studies are already debunked beyond recovery!
The currents involved can be remarkably narrow and local. If your sensors are spread out wider than the typical current width then a tiny variation in the location of the current can mimic a variation in strength. It’s called under sampling, and a proper sampling set up would be according to Nyquist’s theorem. Which, I guess, would prescribe a much denser grid of sensors.
Of course AMOC depends slightly on the amount of ice cover in polar regions, thus how much water cools and sinks to the depths….but really the Earth spinning has to slow down and the distance between North America and Europe has to be reduced…before it can change very significantly.
What is it that organizes the flow of the AMOC? Well the North Atlantic Gyre sets the basic flow and that is determined by wind stress. Surface winds blow west to east in the temperate latitudes and oppositely so in the subtropics and tropics. It’s true that the sinking of cooled and saline waters in sub polar to polar regions produce an overturning; yet without the persistence of trade winds the AMOC would take on a very different form from its present one.
The trade winds do not blow steady, but rather go through long period variations — seasons to decades for sure. So too must all coupled ocean flows: the Florida current, Gulf stream, equatorial currents, North Atlantic drift, and even the second order sorts of flows like Ekman transport in the Atlantic Gyre. The idea that we can attribute some variations in flow to “climate change” and others to known (and even unknown) variations in global weather over a short term just fuels coupled climate anxiety.
“The potential weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in response to anthropogenic forcing, suggested by climate models, is at the forefront of scientific debate. A key AMOC component, the Florida Current (FC), has been measured using submarine cables between Florida and the Bahamas at 27°N nearly continuously since 1982. A decrease in the FC strength could be indicative of the AMOC weakening. Here, we reassess motion-induced voltages measured on a submarine cable and reevaluate the overall trend in the inferred FC transport. We find that the cable record beginning in 2000 requires a correction for the secular change in the geomagnetic field. This correction removes a spurious trend in the record, revealing that the FC has remained remarkably stable. The recomputed AMOC estimates at ~26.5°N result in a significantly weaker negative trend than that which is apparent in the AMOC time series obtained with the uncorrected FC transports.”
I think there was an error in the measurements. I’m afraid that satellite measurements should also be corrected, depending on the drift of the satellites.
We see slow MOC events during negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes, as in both ends of 2010, summer 2012, March 2013, and trends of slowing MOC speeds during negative NAO regimes, as in 1995-1999 and 2005-2012. The Gulf Stream does not appreciably slow when the MOC slows, so the residual Gulf Stream flow which isn’t overturning then feeds a warmer AMO and Arctic Ocean, as from 1995.
Rising CO2 forcing is modeled to increase positive NAO states, which would in theory drive a faster MOC.