By P Gosselin on 2. February 2025
The AMOC Quarrel
By Frank Bosse
(Translated from the original at Klimanachrichten)
We have kept you, dear readers, very promptly informed about AMOC conjectures.
Recently, we also informed you about a new study that found a stable Atlantic overturning circulation since the 1960s. It is not the only one in the recent past.
However, Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is a great advocate of the “The Day after Tomorrow” scenario of a collapsing oceanic current. As recently as June, 2024, he noted on X (formerly Twitter) that the AMOC mitigation saga “is even more dramatic than it ever was”.
He himself had been responsible for a whole series of papers as author or co-author, which also contributed to the scenario, and he initiated an “open letter” in the fall of 2024 that dramatically addressed politicians. We also reported on this.
Of course, the new findings could not couldn’t pass him by without comment. Under the headline “The AMOC is slowing down, is stable, yes, no, no, yes…” he commented on it on the blog “Real Climate”, which is run by scientists, including himself, Gavin Schmidt from NASA, and others.
What he has to say there can be stated in a nutshell: He defends his approaches and lists the problems of the more recent studies. That was to be expected. For example, he emphasizes that the new climate models (CMIP 6) hardly show any connection between “his fingerprint”, the sea surface temperatures of the “warming hole” in the North Atlantic (see the article here from 17 January 2025) and the actual current, but that the approximately 4 years older ones called CMIP5 do. He also questions whether the new ones are really more reliable in this respect than the older ones. However, the effort for the former was considerable.
He summarized:
I don’t believe that the newer methods are more reliable than the old ones (his, the author). … However, since we don’t have measurements going back far enough, there is still some uncertainty in this respect…“
And that’s the crux of the matter! He “doesn’t believe” in all honor, but knowledge in science would probably be more adequate! And yes, everything is uncertain and “nothing precise is known”.
This is also stated by the well-known oceanologist Carl Wunsch in a paper published in August 2022:
In the coming decades, continuous monitoring of the entire coupled ocean-atmosphere system will be necessary to assess the true risks of AMOC collapse, but to date there is no evidence of imminent or overwhelming danger.“
There are many assumptions, a lot of back and forth in science and, when viewed in the light of day, a lot of “belief” or “non-belief”, i.e. the unmistakable indication of a lack of knowledge.
So when you, dear reader, are once again told by a trained psychologist in a news magazine that there is “an imminent danger in a few decades if things go badly” (see here) or here: “Europe’s heating is weakening”: be careful, people are pretending a ‘certainty’ that simply does not exist. As I said, it’s not seldom about assumptions and belief or non-belief.
Also Prof. Rahmstorf rushed to say: “The Gulf Stream system is failing”, and not “The Gulf Stream system” could “somehow, somewhere, sometime” stall, the northern branch, the AMOC is perhaps stable or no, or yes (according to his own blog headline).
Image: generated with the KNMI Climate Explorer.
The AMOC is still in excellent health today, as the measurements from 2004 onwards show; these are the actual “hard facts”.
We should finally stop scaring people in the Atlantic, it doesn’t work with enlightened citizens like you, dear readers.
From article:”… X (formerly Twitter)…”
How long must people add the appending info so we know what is being talked about? Stop all ready.
Maybe about the same time people stop calling them tweets.
How about “Twitter[X.com]” or “X(“Twitter”)”?
I like “TwiX”. And I still prefer Tweet.
Rahmstorf is a bit of an headbanger
Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests
Stefan Rahmstorf, at the University of Potsdam, Germany, said: “There is still large uncertainty where the Amoc tipping point is, but the new study adds to the evidence that it is much closer than we thought
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests
It is already 2025. Any evidence of the AMOC collapsing now?
Uh, I wrote this yesterday in the open thread, but it really belongs here:
Uh I am not sure if anyone looked at RealClimate recently, but S. Rahmstorf blogged quite a jewel this week:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/the-amoc-is-slowing-its-stable-its-slowing-no-yes/#comments
in defense of his “the AMOC is weakening” idea..
“In the North Atlantic, the historic runs of CMIP6 models on average do not reproduce the ‘cold blob’ despite this being such a striking feature of the observational data,[..] Thus I consider CMIP6 models as less suited to test how well the ‘cold blob’ works as AMOC indicator than the CMIP5 models.”
Somebody needs to tell him that CMIP5 models are just bad copies of CMIP6 models with lower resolution and bad cloud physics!
!!! Here is the important part !!!
If he cannot find his wanted pattern in the newer and better models, it is about time to man up and correct his old papers!
Rahmstorf was one of the six initial agitators forcing the retraction of Alimonti´s paper, which did not contain such scientific blunders, surely his firm stand on questionable science MUST lead to a retraction of his papers which seems to be based just on modeling artifacts as he describes himself in his blog article!
(BTW this is similarly true for all the other CMIP5 based findings, in an honest scientific field that climate sensitivity correction of about 25% should cause a shock-wave of retrackted old papers!)
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Actually, its who you blow. Experienced grant-wranglers like Rahmstorf sail closely in the wind emitted by Leftist ideological politicians and activist bureaucrats (Deep State) deciding on the grants.
There is also the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) with a ~60 year range from negative to positive.
The key point is that the AMO is due to flip from its current positive phase to negative, and :
… independent AMOC fingerprints derived from the observed subsurface ocean temperature indicate that the past AMOC variations are coherent with the observed AMO…..
So are the AMOC variations and the “cold blob” just precursors to an AMO flip?
“it doesn’t work with enlightened citizens like you, dear readers.”
Speak for yourself.. I’m terrified!
Actually I went out to the Gulf Stream a couple of weeks ago out of Cape Hatteras (on one of the few days this January that it was calm enough to go) and surprise.. it was still there! It’s actually pretty amazing crossing over the boundary in the winter as the water changes and it warms up significantly. The fish this time of year run along the boundary feeding. The Gulf Stream water is pretty deep as well and the current is noticeable.
Rahmstorf’s AlarmingClimate(TM) article references this article:
https://rapid.ac.uk/
Please take a look at the graph of flow rates, in Sverdrups (what will they think of next?). Just eyeballing the data, I’d suggest that anyone who believes there’s something ‘going on’ probably needs to seek professional help.
True but the application of creative statistics will give you whatever your funding source wants. M.E. Mann proved that conclusively with his Hockey Stick.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) flow is typically measured in Sverdrups (Sv), with an average value around 15-18 Sverdrups, meaning it transports approximately 15-18 million cubic meters of water per second;
Newton’s First Law
According to Newton’s first law (the law of inertia), there must be a cause for any change in velocity (a change in either magnitude or direction) to occur. Inertia is related to an object’s mass. If an object’s velocity relative to a given frame is constant, then the frame is inertial and Newton’s first law is valid.
average speed of the Gulf Stream, however, is four miles per hour (6.4 kilometers per hour) => 6400 m / 3600 sec = 1.778 m/s
1 M^3 salt water = 1025 kilograms
16 Sverdrups /1.778 m/s = 900,000,000 m^3 sea water
If the mass has units of kilograms and the velocity of meters per second, the kinetic energy has units of kilograms-meters squared per second squared.
K.E. = 1/2 m v^2 => 1/2 (900,000,000 m^3/s x 1025 kg/m^3) x 1.778 ^2 = 922,500,000,000 Kg * 3.16 m/s^2 = 922,500,000,000 kj
which converts to 1,279,405 kw-hr for every meter of the Gulf Stream. Stopping all those Artesians going to heat up something.
Wunsch also said that the Gulf Stream would only collapse if the Earth stopped spinning, the winds stop blowing, or the continents suddenly changed position.
Remember CO2 is the magic molecule
Apparently it’s the God Particle, and not that other thing.
Jeff.
How can something so inherently EVIL as the CO2 molecule…
.. be called the God particle. 😉
Off topic- sorry, but today I saw a climate discussion on the Wall St. Journal’s web site. I posted 2 comments- one saying we’ve always had hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc.
The other comment was simply giving the URL for WUWT – and then I got a message from the WSJ saying it was deleted. At first I thought maybe they don’t allow URLs- but I see URLs in other messages.
The title of the article that I posted those comments to is: “Climate Change to Wipe Away $1.5 Trillion in U.S. Home Values, Study Says”
LOL. Near the bottom of the article it admits that the study did not include inflation and assumed no adaptation to the climate change. Also, if there is 30years of modestly rising housing prices [~2.3% per yr] the net loss of the home value would be….wait for it:.. 1.5%.
That is not a “Wallop” to anyone with common sense.
Where are the editors at the WSJ?
Can’t have their readership researching facts, can they?
Warm water will circulate around the North Atlantic in a clockwise gyre as long as the physical facts that move it continue. they are 1. The axis of the earths orbit is tilted at about 23 degrees from the ecliptic and 2. the earth rotates about once every 24 hours. Neither of those facts have any relationship to trace gases in the atmosphere.
If you are saying that the spin is induced by the angle of the Earth and the spin of the Earth, then surely this system must be losing energy. Since the angle won’t change, then the Earth’s rotation must slow down.
How long before the Earth stands still. And will Keanu Reeves star in it?
/s Of course.
Nerd that I am, I will answer your question regardless of your “/s” tag 🙂
According to different sources , rotation is currently slowing down by 1.8 to 2.3 milliseconds per century. If it continues at that rate it will stand still somewhere between 3.7 and 4.8 billion years from now
The whole article in one clause:
“since we don’t have measurements going back far enough, there is still some uncertainty“
Rahmstorf has made a good living for himself. He’s tied with “Brother Love’s Travellin’ Show” in funding-to-message-quality ratio.
Neil Diamond is underappreciated by contemporary culture.
Stefan Rahmstorf Struggles with the Reality of Uncertainty
This man allways struggles, but AMOC seems to be his Waterloo, it’s his obsession. 😀
Story tip – what success looks like.
Guido has previously noted how little interestthere is in working for Labour’s state-owned energy investment company GB Energy.
…
GB Energy boss Juergen Maier said in his first broadcast interview today that the company won’t even hire the promised 1,000 staff in Aberdeen for 20 years. Nor could he spell out how or when GB Energy would take £300 off British energy bills. It may have a large HR team soon though…
https://order-order.com/2025/02/03/struggling-gb-energy-hiring-hr-director-for-117000/
GB Energy exists to ensure that ‘investors’ in renewables are assured decent returns courtesy of taxpayers.
Rahmstorf banged on about AMOC for decades. Ditto Hansen on sea level rise acceleration. Ditto Wadhams on Arctic summer sea ice disappearance. Ditto Sterling on climate endangered polar bears. They were all fundamentally wrong for very simple basic reasons, but could not ever admit it because their false concerns were also their alarmist credentials. History will not be kind to them.
“fundamentally wrong … could not ever admit .. false concerns were … credentials.”
True for many. I’d add Mann and his graph. I hope history forgives them. The biggest irony I see is that so few bystanders know the arguments and even fewer would care. If your biggest source of positive feedback is —- then how can you call it —- without scrapping everything? Raises questions of self reflection at least for me.
Just like snitches earn a few bucks by being police informants…they profess their motive is the good of humanity.
Stefan Rahmstorf struggles with reality of any sort … period.!
An inmate of the Potsdam Institute for krazy klimate kooks.
I’ve forgotten the technical name for the use of such a statement in an argument, but agreeing that there system is stable – essentially no drama – yet more dramatic than ever – is like multiplying by zero.
Its a wonderful way to lie.
The overturning (the MOC, or AMOC) slowed down during negative North Atlantic Oscillation regimes in 1995-1999 and in 2005-2012. The RAPID data shows that the Gulf Stream does not slow down when the MOC is slower, so if the overturning rate is reduced, there must be proportionally more of the relatively constant speed Gulf Stream current keeping the AMO and the Arctic Ocean warmer.
Rising CO2 forcing is expected to increase positive NAO states, which in theory would speed up the overturning and drive a colder AMO, just like faster solar wind states do.
….
The doomsday economic, theological, social, and climate science predictions are limited in value except for the few who have good promotional skills and connections. How else do you think Ravi Batra sold all those book copies and Paul Ehrlich got on the Tonight Show?