Ah, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapse—our old friend. Like a horror movie franchise that refuses to die, the idea that the Gulf Stream is about to shut down and plunge Europe into an icy apocalypse has returned. This time, the BBC is breathlessly warning that “the chance of it happening is growing”. But before you start knitting survivalist-grade wool socks, let’s take a moment to review how many times we’ve heard this story before—and why it never seems to pan out.
A Climate Catastrophe… Someday, Maybe, Possibly
According to the BBC, AMOC is supposedly “getting weaker,” but they immediately admit that direct measurements have only been taken since 2004—meaning we have barely two decades of actual data. Now, call me old-fashioned, but when you’re talking about an ocean system that has been operating for millions of years, 20 years of data is like trying to predict a person’s entire life based on a single Tuesday morning.
And what’s their big evidence? Ocean floor sediments and a “cold blob” in the Atlantic. That’s right, they’re looking at dirt samples and a patch of water that isn’t warming like the rest of the ocean, and somehow, this is supposed to spell doom for civilization.
This wouldn’t be so bad if they admitted the uncertainty. Instead, the article plays a game of “it’s probably not happening, but it totally could!” For instance, the IPCC says they have “medium confidence” that AMOC will not collapse this century. But some other scientists say, well, maybe it could! As one of them warns, we “maybe need to be worried”.
What kind of science is this? It sounds more like a horoscope than a serious climate analysis.
Fear-Mongering 101: Every Climate Scare is the Last One
Here’s where it gets really interesting. The article includes dire warnings that “even the most likely scenario” could lead to disastrous storms and colder European winters. But haven’t we been told for decades that global warming was supposed to make winters warmer? How many times have we heard that skiing in the Alps would be a thing of the past? Now, suddenly, the UK is going to be plunged into Arctic conditions.
It’s the ultimate climate fear two-for-one special: No matter what happens—hotter, colder, wetter, drier—it’s all climate change, and it’s all your fault.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard these predictions. The same scare popped up in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), based on theories that had been bouncing around for decades before that. In 2015, similar claims made headlines, only for scientists later to admit that “the jury is still out” on whether AMOC is actually slowing down.
Then, just last month, a new study showed that—wait for it—the North Atlantic Current is actually stable. So, despite all the apocalyptic speculation, the real-world evidence just isn’t there.
The Real Agenda: Cut Emissions, No Matter the Cost
At the end of the article, we get to the real point. The only way to “reduce these risks,” scientists insist, is to cut greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right—whether the planet is warming or cooling, whether AMOC is speeding up or slowing down, the answer is always the same: more regulations, more taxes, more restrictions on energy use.
It’s almost as if the climate narrative isn’t really about science at all, but about controlling human activity.
Conclusion: No, the UK Won’t Freeze Over Anytime Soon
If history is any guide, this latest AMOC scare will soon fade away, just like all the previous ones. Then, in a few years, another set of scientists will “discover” the same threat all over again, and the cycle will repeat.
So, before you panic-buy thermal underwear and start hoarding firewood, remember: Climate doom predictions are like bad fashion trends—they always come back, but they never quite deliver on their promises.
HT/Darren K
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Back in the 1970’s, with the The Next Ice Age Is Coming Right Soon Now scare, the same “remedy” was insisted on—cutting emissions and generally deindustrializing.
Somehow, I rather think the Greens interest is in deindustrializing, not climate.
Man’s problems are all caused by man. Eliminate Man and man has no more problems
Reminds me of “if we’re not willing to lay down and die as a people, there is no way the human race can survive…”
One young activist that I talked with many years ago was convinced that the worst mistake mankind ever made was agriculture.
He was convinced that all of our problems could be solved if only everyone would go back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle.
if only everyone would go back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle.
And I’ll bet that he didn’t practice that himself, right?
Probably couldn’t Knapp a flint point or make, let alone throw an Atlatl
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
I’ve been making that argument for the last 20+ years. This demonisation of CO2 has nothing whatever to do with climate and everything to do with eco-activists’ horror of modern civilisation.
If they were genuinely concerned that fossil fuel use was damaging the planet they would campaigning for more nuclear installations. But they aren’t because it isn’t CO2 per se that is the problem; it’s modernity. Their aim is to “unpick the industrial revolution” and return us to a largely agrarian society, though I am in no way convinced they would like it if they got it!
Like Freddie from “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the “collapsing Gulf Stream” can be shot, stabbed, run down by a semi AND a freight train, and finally burned up in a runaway LiIon battery conflagration; and yet it somehow still arises from the dead! I’m beginning to get an inkling of where the libtards get their religious-like fervor!
I like that analogy, I’ll use it you don’t mind.
With the cooling phase of the AMO progressing, I would expect to see more “It’s cold because of global warming” stories to come up. The true believers will be shivering in the snow (because their power has been cut off to stop the warming) and cursing the “global warming” for their predicament.
The original plan, as I see it, was to have the “mitigation” measures in place by the early 2000s. That would have allowed them to use the cooling phase of the AMO as “evidence” that their theory was right and their measures (all authoritarian in nature) were necessary and effective. Fortunately for the world, bureaucrats are nothing if not incompetent, so they were nowhere near ready when the cooling phase started. They missed the window of opportunity and now will need to scramble to come up with some “plausible” story of how the increasing CO2 is now causing “warming” that people experience as extreme cold. Most people will believe this.
Extract from Tisdale’s “Who Turned On The Heat”:
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is a mode of natural variability that impacts the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic. When the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic are rising faster than global sea surface temperatures, as they have for the past few decades, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is contributing to the warming of the global oceans. Conversely, when the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic are rising slower than global sea surface temperatures, or when they’re cooling, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is suppressing the warming of the global oceans. This will happen in the not-too-distant future, if it hasn’t begun to do so already.
I have put up this image of Central England Temps (CET) with the AMO before, but it reinforces the Tisdale statement. The outcome will be a cooler period for the UK and Europe, but the AMOC and the UK survived the last AMO flip during the early 1960’s, and will so again and again, every 60 years or so.
Direct measurements of the AMOC only start from 2004 – 20 years is nowhere near enough data to comment on a ~60 year cycle.
Likewise 20 years does not adhere to the IPCC Climate definition of 30 years.
The takeaway is: (AMO) cycles are indicators of where reality is heading. And the positive to negative ‘flip’ will have a relatively small impact. It doesnt just..stop, unless of course you believe in the Co2 primary forcing idea/ myth which will in their eyes spell catastrophy. They need this idea to support their alarm and cult/ religion. Impending DOOM. Always a useful weapon for ‘change’. Never bottom up, always elites replacing other elites..
AMO seems to start the next cooling phase about now.However, the stratospheric water vapor from Hunga Tonga eruption might delay cooling a couple of years. The temperature history of North Atlantic (0-70N) sea surface(*), shows clearly the AMO and steady warming – recovery from LIA. Simple curve fit forecasts cool 2040s.
Detailed analysis: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339274895_Increasing_Carbon_Dioxide_Concentration_in_Atmosphere_Has_Negligible_Effect_on_North_Atlantic_Sea_Surface_Temperature
(*) NOAA seems to have removed the data from their server.
“This wouldn’t be so bad if they admitted the uncertainty.”
From the article
Oh it’ll happen… The Day After Tomorrow…😘
Yet somehow, when SL was two meters higher then today, the AMOC was fine.
By the way, Elon Musk has entered the EPA building. True story.
Here is James Arness playing Elon Musk… (It’s a quantum thing)
Get out of DOGE
https://youtu.be/4zpyvBNC7SM?si=KrCMuDQg4kJDiHWT
So they are admitting they DON’T HAVE A CLUE.
… but published an article anyway 🙂
Why would they do that ? !
You have to give a boost to the project narrative just to keep the plates spinning.
The fact that they knew of such uncertainties means they never should have written that article.
In the 4th paragraph, yes.
However, in our scan and scroll societies, no one gets past the headline and first paragraph.
Glaciations have been cyclical (appx 110,000 – 120,000 years) over the last 800,000+ years. The last one began over 125,000 years ago so the next is due. While milankovitch cycles can explain a plausible cause for these events, they can’t rule out other possible contributing factors like potential disruption to various ocean currents.
The Changing Climate might not be the cause of the next Glaciation as the cyclical pattern does indicate the next cooling phase is due, even past due.
The oceans in the northern hemisphere need to be warm to induce glaciation. So far only warm enough to have increasing ice extent on Greenland and a few northern slopes near the Arctic Ocean.
Snow fall will need to be much higher before the permafrost melt reverses across Canada and Siberia. The oceans of the NH have a lot of warming to come yet.
First the oceans warm as the peak solar intensity increases in the NH then the snowfall overtakes snow melt on mountains and northern slopes. Glaciers run down into the valleys. The average elevation of the land increases over the falling sea level so the oceans stay warm but the land continues to cool. That accelerates advection from oceans to land. The oceans do not cool until the peak solar shifts south again.
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The drop in sea level aligns with rising solar intensity in the NH until the depth of glaciation when glacier calving prevents the oceans from warming and the glacial cycle quickly recovers to the next interglacial.
Nice Charles. This is why we need to force these guys into using the term global warming. Everybody knows what global warming means. It means the earth is getting warmer. Climate change on the other hand doesn’t mean anything therefore it can mean anything. That’s what they like about it. Maybe it’s time to join these guys and convince them that they are all going to freeze to death from global warming. Will they understand how ridiculous that is? In any case we must convince them that their only salvation is nuclear energy because it works if it is cold or hot or windy or calm or sunny or dark. Quick before it is too late build a dozen nuclear reactors if you want to live.
Well, their logic is that the Greens want to win, so going from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ is just creating a bigger hat where more things fit in. As the climate always changes they always win. Actual numbers are not considered if the future is always 5-10 years away. It is always ‘could lead to..’ or ‘higher chance of..’. A win win scenario. Or lose lose if you will. Reality can only be postponed f so long although religious fervor makes up f that to a large extend..
Uh.. I already posted two times on WUWT about S. Rahmstorf blogging this week over on Realclimate:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/the-amoc-is-slowing-its-stable-its-slowing-no-yes/#comments
“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.”
Rahmstorf concedes that CMIP6 models do NOT show the cold blob of Atlantic ocean water.
Since CMIP6 models have the higher resolution, but fail to reflect this seemingly important real life feature, this can only mean the models are lacking, nothing to wiggle about that one.
CMIP5 are the cheap copy with lower resolution and lacking in physics (part of the upgrade was a better aerosol-cloud micro-physics), they cannot all of the sudden “be better” than CMIP6, what they show is just an artifact, likely caused by biased input parameters.
The only conclusion can be CMIP6 models are bad, but CMIP5 models are worse.
Otherwise why not using CMIP4 or CMIP1 models, I am pretty sure their lousiness allows for all kind of shenanigans!
BTW, this of course is not on Rahmstorf alone, for example G. Schmidt is active in the comments of this particular blog article, he and other obviously endorse Rahmstorf´s bizarre view that it is okay to use outdated models for current simulations.
CHIMP6…. but the science has been settled for decades?
Since that is true (/s) then why pay trillions of dollars to improve the models?
The NASA GISS climate model under CMIP6 high CO2 scenario has the Gulf Stream collapsing by 2080. So it is important to keep this alarm going till its proven wrong by observation in 2080. Then it just becomes another failed prediction.
Sane people can only hope that Trump will help get science back into climate science.
“They” have spent so much time and effort and money on the global warming scam….
.. now they realise the AMO is starting to head downwards and there will probably be a cooling trend. 🙂
Any story will do.
.
Indirectly at least, we have far more than 20 years of data. We have centuries, millennia in fact.
If warming triggers the AMOC to stop which in turn triggers a sudden plunge in temperatures in Europe, wouldn’t we have both historical and archeological record of it?
The Medieval (950 to 1250 AD), Roman (250 BC to 400 AD) and Minoan (8,000 years before present) warm periods were all warmer than it is now. We have tons of evidence for all three happening, we have zero evidence of them being interrupted by a sudden cold wave across Europe. Perhaps one could argue that we don’t have very good records from the Minoan warm period, we’d have to rely on the same proxies that told us it was warm. In all the studies of proxies that you’ve every heard, is there a SINGLE one that calls out a sudden cold spell in Europe that could be attributed to a collapsing AMOC? Not one, or they would have cited it.
As for the Roman and Medieval, we can rely on historical records as well as proxies, and neither mention any sudden cold snap that could be attributed to a collapsing AMOC.
So now we’re supposed to believe that it was warmer than it is now, for centuries at a time, without causing the AMOC to collapse, but there’s a chance that could happen now. By what logic could anyone come to that conclusion?
I know, I know. Its like communism. This time will be different.
By what logic would they come to that conclusion?
By the logic of Climate Alarmists rule number 1,
‘Ignore logic, use what ever is necessary to convey an ongoing crisis exists’.
News tip! Here’s another AMOC story, from the February 4 news. James Hansen, ocean currents, and RCP8.5 models
– – – – – – – – –
Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/04/climate-change-target-of-2c-is-dead-says-renowned-climate-scientist
Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? (By Hansen)
Global temperature leaped more than 0.4C (0.7F) during the past two years, the 12-month average peaking in August 2024 at +1.6C relative to the temperature at the beginning of last century (the 1880-1920 average). This temperature jump was spurred by one of the periodic tropical El Nino warming events, but many Earth scientists were baffled by the magnitude of the global warming, which was twice as large as expected for the weak 2023-2024 El Nino.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
“Global temperature leaped more than 0.4C (0.7F) during the past two years,”
And the temperature has fallen by over 0.5C since the high point in 2024. Did CO2 suddenly stop going into the air?
What unprecedented event happened right before the temperatures “leaped” higher? Can you say: Hunga Tonga?
So, today we are 0.5C cooler than the high point in 2024, and instead of being 1.6C above the average, the so-called “Climate tipping point” we are now at 1.1C above the average (going by the bastardized NASA temperature data).
My question is: Does Hansen really believe what he says about the climate, or is there a charlatan hiding inside him? I truly don’t know, but I suspect he is a True Believer. I didn’t think that before, but I’m leaning in that direction now.
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.
Change in climate is climate change. Whether this is related to CO2 emissions as opposed to natural variability and other anthropogenic factors (urban sprawl, deforestation, etc) never seems to penetrate alarmists sense of certainty
Gulf Stream & AMOC thermohaline currents carry vast amounts of heat from the tropics to northern Europe, and without those currents it is true that northern Europe, including the British Isles, would be horribly cold. That’s not controversial.
The driving mechanism for thermohaline circulation is that evaporation and cooling makes surface water in the northern North Atlantic saltier and denser than elsewhere, so it sinks. What goes down must come up, and the water eventually rises again in the tropics, roughly a millennium later.
During glaciations those currents are apparently intermittent, which causes huge climate variations, especially in northern Europe. Those variations are called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, and they dwarf recent climate change. It is believed that they’re caused by meltwater surges in the northern North Atlantic, perhaps due to changing ice dams diverting meltwater from the great northern ice sheets. Fresher water is less dense than saltier water, so adding fresh meltwater in the northern North Atlantic prevents it from sinking, thus slowing or halting the AMOC.
But Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles don’t happen during interglacials, like our current Holocene. That’s presumably because without the great northern Laurentide & Fennoscandian ice sheets there’s no source for the huge influxes of freshwater into the northern North Atlantic which would be required to halt or appreciably slow those currents.
When I say “huge” I mean really, really yuuuge. Some time back I did some calculations to estimate the effect of diverting the mighty Mississippi River out the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and concluded it would have a negligible effect on the Gulf Stream and AMOC.
I remember, back in the early 70s reading an article in the Scientific American (when it was worth reading), about this. The theory that fresh water entering the sea from the rivers on the Russian arctic coast, could eventually cause it to collapse.
So they’ve been running the scare story for over 50 years.
It’s almost as if the climate narrative isn’t really about science at all, but about controlling human activity.
UN Officials on multiple occasions have clearly stated it is not about the environment, it is about restructuring the world economy ala One World Order.
Don’t laugh, this is practice for deflecting evidence during the coincident cooling cycles of the AMO cooling downcycle (long cycle), solar heat storage loss in the oceans after groupings of high solar irradiance sun cycles (long cycle) and grouped La Ninas (short cycle). Battery storage will not be able to handle 10 to 20 years of cooling.
(Yawn) Wake me when they start the “coming ice age” scare again.
The only way to reduce all risks is to not take them.
When anything alive on this earth is born, there are inherent risks present immediately.
So stop being born and eliminate the risks.
Sounds exactly like the current demarxcrat plan to me.
Zombies are all the rage, even in “science”. Failing AMOC is like a demon that just won’t die. Very much like the creature inhabiting a certain oval office he past four years, there may be no pulse, no intellectual activity, no soul but there remains immense potential to do mischief that will harm hundreds of millions of the living and seriously damage the environment.
What else would anyone expect from the BBC? Soon The Guardian will add its two pence worth and all the alarmists will join the chorus, except they’ve worked this song-and-dance to death so that all it generates now is a chorus of horse laughs.
There was a mega warm blob in the North Atlantic from 2023, driven by a major negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) regime from February 2023 and through much of 2024. The popular cold blob was 2013-2015 during a positive NAO regime. The very positive NAO conditions in 2018 saw another cooler AMO anomaly or cold blob.
The AMOC slows down during negative NAO regimes, while at the same time the North Atlantic sea surface warms. If the AMOC shut down, then the near constant speed Gulf stream would warm the North Atlantic (and Arctic Ocean) even more.
So from the logic of the observed behaviour, the expected increase in positive NAO conditions from rising CO2 forcing would have to speed up the AMOC, and cool the AMO. Which it completely failed to do from 1995, being overwhelmed by weaker indirect solar forcing, causing negative NAO regimes 1995-1999 and 2005-2012, and with the AMOC slowing down precisely during those two periods.
They have been telling these exact lies, literally, for decades.
https://youtu.be/hqIr8VC3OI8?si=G_rZg3TAPVkZZbxg
Just watch the UK Met Office alarmists in action and then read the comments.
At some point the presenter is responding to something the featured ‘professor’ said. The guest prof said ( paraphrasing):’ plants take up Co2 from the air..’, to which the presenter answered w ‘fascinating’! These kinds of presentations are for the general public, to keep them ignorant because ‘experts say’..