From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Yes, it’s that old bogeyman again!
From the Mail:
The network of ocean currents which keep the Earth’s climate stable could be about to collapse, scientists have warned.
In an open letter, 44 of the world’s leading climate scientists say that key Atlantic Ocean currents – including the Gulf Stream – are on the brink of failure.
The scientists caution that the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could lead to ‘devastating and irreversible impacts’ which will affect ‘the entire world for centuries to come’.
The resulting climate fallout could plunge the UK into a ‘new Ice Age’, with winter temperatures plummetting up to 15°C (27°F) below the current average.
While the collapse of the Gulf Stream would be disastrous for Britain, that vital current is just one small part of AMOC’s massive global system.
This giant ocean conveyor belt is critical for moving heat around the planet, but research suggests that it has been slowing down and could soon reach a tipping point.
Without urgent action, the scientists warn that AMOC could fail completely within the next few decades.
As warm water travels northwards from the tropics, it hits the sea ice around Greenland and the Nordic countries, cooling and becoming much saltier.
As the water cools it becomes denser, sinking rapidly towards the bottom of the ocean where it flows back southwards before once again warming and rising to the surface.
This process of ‘deep water formation’ is the engine for a vast global conveyor belt which pumps heat and water all around the Atlantic Ocean.
However, studies suggest that AMOC’s deep water engine has started to slow and is now showing worrying signs of breaking down altogether.
As global temperatures rise, melting ice pours fresh water back into oceans, diluting the denser salty water and preventing it from sinking.
If this process were to break down entirely, it would have catastrophic knock-on effects including the weakening of the Gulf Stream and the disruption of global weather patterns.
Its “The Day After Tomorrow” all over again!
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:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/oceans/amoc
Note 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:
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/icelights/2012/02/arctic-oscillation-winter-storms-and-sea-ice
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.
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This isn’t science! It’s a political campaign led by our old friend and sometime Nobel Laureate, climatologist Michael Mann – and other ’eminent’ scientists. So, straight away it’s a direct appeal to authority: listen to us, “we know and you haven’t a clue“…. but we do.
If there is a dodgy data set to be exploited you won’t find the Mann very far away. 2004 isn’t even 30 years ago. Once in the early phases of the climate campaign we were instructed that a weather event was not a trend. How times have changed, they can now magically pinpoint the human fingerprint in a storm, a flood, a drought – even a wildfire – with attribution [pseudo]science.
These ’eminent scientists’ should have been told: get back to us in another ten years at least.
At least we have a better idea of who left their cocaine in the White House. She probably wants it back. In any case, Mann’s duplicity probably will help bring back Hitler.
Mann comes across as a bit of a wannabe Goebbels.
Without the charisma
Listen to us, Mann, ““we know
andyou haven’t a clue“”And Mann has been elected to the Royal Society. As a Brit I cringe with shame. But then the RS had gone all climatey and lefty so I’m not surprised.
To be fair we all know who he is, possibly even know what he looks like. I’m sure I could scan the list of Royal Society names and say “why the…
“Air temperatures here in _____ have already increased 22 deg F since today’s morning low … at this rate, by a week from now, it will be 212 deg F and the oceans will be boiling! Omigod!! Catastrophe!!!”
… which says everything you need to know about scare stories …
So if all that global warming causes AMOC to collapse, please explain the known prior warm periods that were significantly warmer than today yet there was no AMOC collapse and the UK did not enter into a “new ice age”.
C’mon, enlighten us.
It’s that old old scam that global warming causes global cooling. Same as a warming climate causes greater storminess (proved false both here on earth and on our sister planets in the solar system) … up is really down, and black is really white … and we believe you are stupid enough to be scared out of your wits by all that.
And the cold air from the upper troposphere can rapidly be pulled down to flash freeze the ground. With winds in the eye that did not even come close to ripping the flags from their staffs.
Just ignore the fact that the air is colder up there because it is less dense. Just ignore the fact that much less air can displace much denser air is mere seconds. And, just ignore the mammoth in the museum of natural history that was flash frozen 10,000 years ago (in the movie) with food in its stomach and mouth.
Good report about one of the two main factors in the unequal distribution of climates. As slow, complicated, and controversial as climate change is, the even slower factor of plate tectonics, or continental drift, is a bigger factor. Imagine the repeated coalescing of all the continents into a super plate, then the separation into separate continents all over the earth, and imagine how ocean currents are changed along with this process, which is still full-speed ahead (well, a couple of inches a year). This continuous movement of the plates is why geologists often feel dizzy, not because of the cold survival fluids they consume.
Also ignored is the recent Icelandic volcanism and the sulphur dioxide cloud that passed over the Atlantic.
“How old do you think Earth is?” Is critical to ask at the start of climate debates.
It’s tectonic plates all the way down!
Seems a bit of a contradiction to worry about freezing, doesn’t it?
But consider Stephen Foster’s insights in 1847 in the song “Oh Susanna”. Maybe he was on to something.
“Oh, I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
I’m going to Louisiana
My true love for to see
It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot, I froze to death
Susanna, don’t you cry”
He knew that global warming would freeze us all!
So Stephen Foster is the Grandfather of Climate Catasrophe!
I like it!
Dagnabbit! David…now I can’t get it out of my head…..Susanna, don’t you cry….
And don’t call me Shirley?
Airplane.
Roger, Under.
Being from Kentucky, I particularly enjoyed that quote.
“This process of ‘deep water formation’ is the engine for a vast global conveyor belt which pumps heat and water all around the Atlantic Ocean.”
Eh, no. This is a widespread misconception. The global circulation is driven by the temperature difference between equatorial and polar waters. The ‘deep water formation’ in polar regions is only an insignificant perturbation on it. The global circulation modellers appear to lack understanding of basic thermodynamics.
But they do understand the [requirements of the] narrative.
It cannot be stated enough:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and, hence, clamoring to be led to safety) with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
+1000
The melting ice results in colder water. The AMOC works because of cold water and salty water sink. It would seem reasonable to speculate that water that is colder but less salty will still sink.
If one looks at the currents, it seems the cold water flows in the opposite direction from the warm. This seems to indicate a thermal gradient exists between the two currents. If there is more ice melt water off Greenland in the south bound flow, it is possible that it pushes the northern current further towards Europe.
Nothing they said indicates the sky is falling.
Story Tip
UN warning of 3.1C global warming
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0d24w28qno
This passage caught my eye
“We’ve heated our planet by 1.1C so far, and we’re feeling the effects on so many levels”
Of course, that will be from the end of the Little Ice Age. Which, of course, any sensible person, acknowledge, was an exceptional cold period.
Nowt, like a good scare story, to make people panic.
No one ever demonstrated why a slightly warmer world would be a worse world. A warming by 3C is a warming by slightly over 1% in absolute temperature. Piffle in the grand scheme of things.
All previous warm periods are referred to as Optimums ie Roman and Minoan, why is this warm period different. Any delay in the start of the next ice age can only be of benefit.
That is a point I noted some time ago.
We can’t have an optimum, ruining a catastrophe!
Sometime in, I think the noughies, there was a prominent article in a ‘top’ UK newspaper declaring categorically that the Gulf Stream was in imminent danger of collapse. The scientific evidence for this?
’Scientists’ had take TWO samples 5 years part from the same position in the Atlantic, all variables being consistent, and found the temperature in the second sample was higher. They then drew a straight line through these two points and extrapolated for 100 years! This data, they claimed, doomed the UK and the European mainland.
Charlatans masquerading as scientists.
Story Tip
The Guardian has an article with climate scientists justifying putting emotions above facts:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/25/we-have-emotions-too-climate-scientists-respond-to-attacks-on-objectivity
Why Nullius in verba?
“”acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work.””
No, it’s a vital part of their activism.
Which is their work.
Any scientist who proclaims “It’s Worse Than We Thought” is not practicing science.
“Worse” is a subjective expression of some great undefined threat that increases. Its use shows bias as a pre-determined level of grading not established by a priori reasoning is being referred to.
Yes, but it’s not just a subjective expression, it’s also a value judgement. The implication is that they have some divine or Gnostic knowledge of what the good and true climate should be (although it’s never specified) and therefore any change to their “ideal” climate is “bad” or “worse”.
These Climate “Scientists” have damned themselves from their own mouths.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. I will face my fear and I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
— Lady Jessica Atreides (Bene Gesserit)
“Eventually it gets pulled back to the surface … ”
Exactly how does water get “pulled”?
“As global temperatures rise, melting ice pours fresh water back into oceans, diluting the denser salty water and preventing it from sinking.”
A process that has been ongoing since the last ice age.
Temperature anomalies to the 1981-2010 average have already fallen below -0.5 C in all Nino regions.
Pressure over the Arctic Circle shows that the stratospheric polar vortex is strengthening after a recent strong geomagnetic storm. The pressure in the north has dropped.
Currently, the fastest ice growth is on the Siberian side.
I think they have confused the Gulf Stream with Kamala Harris’ campaign.
I did not see any lettuce in the Gulf waters.
This correlates well with sea ice in the Arctic. It also stopped it’s melting around this very same time frame.
story tip – here’s yet another “worse than we thought” – forests are no longer doing their job of absorbing CO2 Guardian ups the climate ante
And it’s all our fault! Are you feeling guilty yet?
From the story …
“The boreal forests here in the Sami homeland take so long to grow that even small, stunted trees are often hundreds of years old.”
… which tells me that the boreal forests were sequestering very very small amounts of Carbon. If you want to see carbon sequestration, spend a summer in Iowa watching the corn crop.
Crush those husks into solid blocks and air drop them onto Antarctica (by zepelin?): Carbon sequestered. Otherwise all the corn’s work is reversed by rotting. An individual plant is a carbon sink. A forest with trees growing (sinking), dying and then rotting (sourcing) becomes carbon neutral. Imagine if selling carbon credits for forest land required the conversion be permanent – closest thing to it is lumbering and replanting.
I think the Younger Dryas event, that temporarily reversed the warming following the end of the last ice age, was a completely different event to the gradual melting of ice caps etc, we have been seeing in recent times. That event was caused by sudden and massive influx of cold, fresh water into the N Atlantic, resulting in a the “switch off” of the N Atlantic conveyor (Gulf Stream). This is what caused the temporary re-advance of glaciation. After a few thousand more years, Atlantic Ocean salinity rebalanced itself, allowing the ocean current to gradually re-establish itself.
My own sense of what is happening currently in the N Atlantic, is that the additional fresh water from gradually melting polar regions, is so slow that ocean salinity has more than enough time to adjust. Moreover, the current melting may well be just a natural thermostat, that will switch back at some point. However, the jury is still out on this one. I think, if things continue to warm up or if warming accelerates, then let’s be mindful that human activity is potentially at least partially the cause. If on the other hand, things cool down, as was the case 1960s through 1980s (not to mention “Little Ice Age”…… woops, just did!), then probably, we’re confusing a natural thermostat with Catastrophic Climate Change 🧐😯😖😣😩😫🥵.
But that’s just my sense of it all…and who am I to assess such things. I’ll leave all the completely truthful, unprejudiced, and holy science to Dr Mann and atlrusistic army of highly qualified Climate Scientists🧐😉
“sudden and massive influx of cold, fresh water”
Its hard to imagine something being massive relative to the volume of the N Atlantic. The ocean has a large mass.
Apparently, a quantity of water dammed by ice, lying over a huge expanse of N America, and that would have amounted to the combined volume of Hudson bay and Great Lakes. The thinking is that when the dam wall melted and collapsed, this water that was very low in salinity, spilled into the N Atlantic and was spread over the surface of the much saltier N Atlantic. So, yes you’re correct in assuming nothing compared to the volume of the North Atlantic but when spread over just a few inches deep, this would in fact spread over a significant proportion of the ocean surface. It’s this top cold fresh layer that is thought to have effectively blocked the N Atlantic conveyor. That’s the thinking anyway, and it’s this process some claim is happening currently with the melting of northern sea ice, Greenland ice loss and increased rainfall over the N Atlantic.
Th4e younger Dryas did not gradually sort itself out. It flipped over a period of less than 100 years by several degrees centigrade.
The onset is explicable, the termination remains largely unexplained.
Don’t need to read any farther than here.
Do you have a time machine then as a superior alternative?
Or perhaps your personal abacus would give the answer you prefer?
FFS: get real. Science is done by “models” if we want to see into a (possible) future.
Which is why NWP models use ensembles of the start that vary slightly. And GCM’s use various centres versions.
As long as the models come up with answer you don’t like than this kind of bollocks is ranted out on here by the usual suspects.
That you want 101% certainty in this can only be explained by your ideology.
Do you expect anything else in your life to be a certainty?
Good look in the next one – you may get your wish.
In the mean time try to use just basic common sense Karlo
Nice rant, ruler monkey.
The magnetic pole is shifting.
It is said to be relevant as a current is measured by a cable and induced electric signal..
Since 2000 this is the case.
True or false?
The magnetic pole is shifting and always has and always will because the geography of the planet is changing, the orbit and wobble and other celestial motions are changing, the moon’s orbit is not constant, solar flare and storms affect the magnetic field and that has a geological consequence along with pretty aurora borealis. Things change all the time and my sense is the Greens do not like change.
AMOC will change significantly when:
Until then AMOC will vary somewhat annually due to the rate of freshwater snowmelt entering the northern oceans, and the vagaries of the jet stream blowing warm or cold surface water one way or the other across the Atlantic.
CliSci’s would be much better off figuring out what is going on in the Pacific whose breadth is half the Earth, where it is very clear that the “Ninos” drive the planet’s average temperature.
What, pray tell, is actually being measured, and to what degree of precision, on the y-axis of the AMOC graphic?
Frank ==> Me too! So I cheated, I looked it up….see below.
How many readers thought that maybe they should check and see exactly what the “moc_mar_hc10_mon” graph is a graph of?
Boy, it sure looks like something, doesn’t it? Is that The AMOC? What does the jig-jogging red line represent?
If you go to the Read Me explanation for that marvelous looking “data” and read it carefully (way down at the bottom) you still won’t really know what the heck it is, and I’ll bet my last dollar that it is only a sort of short-cut method of telling AMOC specialists one tiny thing about what the AMOC might or might not be doing, and only between 2004 and 2022 (during which the climate has not changed in nay significant way).
Hint, it is a kind of an index — not a measurement — and is the combination of many factors concerning the AMOC munged together.
Please note that the graph is essentially unit-less — That is unless you happen to already now what an “Sv” is. It should be, according to the ReadMe “Sv (106 m3s-1)” — but it is not a actually a measurement that can be enumerated in cubic meters per second (to any power of ten). It is a MUNGE.
Like far too many CliSci metrics, MUNGES are used in place of real world measurements with the pretense that they can be used to tell us something.
It’s worse than we thought.
Of course the implication is that AGW is the culprit but we do know we are in an interglacial period – perhaps this is the natural process that happens when exit an interglacial period & go back into the next glaciation. Food for thought…