For decades, mainstream media outlets have asserted that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is on the verge of collapse, bringing catastrophic consequences to the planet. This is false. Recent research indicates that climate change has not altered the Atlantic Ocean current, despite repeated claims by the media and some supposed experts to the contrary.
The 2004 Hollywood disaster film The Day After Tomorrow showed an AMOC shutdown plunging the world into an instant Ice Age. The story was loosely based on some scientists predictions that the AMOC and the regional ocean currents that feed into it, were slowing dangerously down. The mainstream media hyped those unverified assertions, setting up the science fiction blockbuster for success.
Mainstream media outlets have periodically pushed the same doomsday narrative, warning that the AMOC is slowing, weakening, or collapsing, with dire predictions of climate chaos for each condition.
For example:
- In 2015, The Washington Post ran the headline: “The Ocean’s Circulation Hasn’t Been This Sluggish in 1,000 Years. That’s Bad News.”
- In 2021, NBC News warned: “A Crucial Ocean Circulation System Is Weakening. Scientists Say It’s Another Sign of a Warming Planet.”
- In 2023, CNN stoked panic with: “A Major Ocean Current Is at Risk of Collapse. Scientists Say It Would Be a Climate Disaster.”
Yet, as Climate Realism has repeatedly pointed out, science debunks these claims (see here). These assertions of a declining AMOC and other large scale ocean currents which drive weather patterns and impact climate change are largely based the projections of speculative climate models rather than on real-world observations or verifiable research.
Two recent peer-reviewed studies, one from February 2025 and one from January 2025, both published in Nature, confirms what many climate realists have pointed out for years—the AMOC has remained stable for at least 60 years, displaying no significant slowing trend. Going further, the scholars who conducted the research concluded that there is no credible evidence to suggest that such a collapse is imminent or even likely in the foreseeable future. Commenting on the climate models which have forecast a collapse of the AMOC, the scientists carrying out the research concluded that climate models are flawed and overstate the risks — models’ simulations have failed to match actual measured trends.
So, where is the wall-to-wall media coverage of this reassuring news? Where are the CNN specials, the New York Times op-eds, and the breathless Guardian headlines announcing that disaster is not in the offing? They are nowhere to be found.
Now that we have two peer-reviewed studies that have determined the AMOC has been stable for at least six decades and is extremely unlikely to collapse in the foreseeable furute, the silence from mainstream media outlets is deafening. The same journalists who eagerly ran worst-case scenario stories are now unwilling to report findings that contradict their previous fearmongering.
The findings of the recent studies confirm what previous research cited at Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance: Ocean Currents have shown, ocean currents are complex, influenced by a variety of natural cycles, and not as fragile as alarmist narratives suggest.
While the mainstream media constantly admonishes the public and politicians to “follow the science,” they conveniently ignore scientific research when it cast doubt upon the narrative that climate change causes everything bad.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is not collapsing, is not slowing catastrophically, and is not about to trigger an Ice Age. The latest scientific research confirms what observational data has shown for decades: AMOC variations are natural, and there is no impending crisis. That’s the good news journalists and news outlets claiming to be presenters of the truth should be reporting, but we at Climate Realism won’t be holding our breaths for it.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
The mainstream does not report the truth if it doesn’t satisfy their project fear agenda. Why? because much of their funding comes from those whose prime interest is to perpetuate fear to protect their own interests.
Also to bring about Agenda 30 and The Great Reset. The crooks depend on CC to subdue us.
I’m old enough to remember when it was only Agenda 21.
that went well . . .
The Misleadia
Baker, 2025 are simply saying that a weak, wind-driven circulation is not a “complete collapse,” even when the thermohaline component ceases:
It is interesting that the contrarian crowd loves a climate modeling study when they think it’s telling them what they want to hear, though.
I think we can all agree that anything coming out of “climate models” is prophecy, akin to myths and legends of science fantasy.
All the articles show is what we all know already,
ie that models are all over the place and are basically clueless and worthless.
But is fun to see climate models proving other climate models wrong, isn’t it 😉
But Isn’t it a well-observed / established feature of the leftist political playbook to –
ALWAYS ACCUSE ADVERSARIES OF DOING WHAT WE OURSELVES ARE DOING
Science advocates generally don’t take an issue with climate modeling studies, that’s a feature unique to the contrarian set.
Funny how you define a “science advocate” is someone who says what you want to hear, while contrarians are the ones asking for data.
AJ still hasn’t figured out that climate models are nothing more than pre-destined computer simulations.
Prophecies of Nostra-dum-ass.
I went here.. and no GCM even gets a mention
Funny how not one single commenter has addressed the substance of my remarks. The Baker et al. study does not contradict previous works, as Anthony claims.
Baker shows that climate models show “nothing happening”
This does contradict other alarmism.
Funny that AJ didn’t address the substance of Anthony’s comment….
ie the the far-left climate media shied away from reporting the fact that models totally contradict each other.
Baker shows what the previous studies show: a weak AMOC persists due to wind-driven upwelling in the Southern Ocean even after the thermohaline driven circulation collapses. Importantly, Baker also finds the same climate impacts as other studies from the weakened AMOC, whether one considers it to have “collapsed” in full or not.
It’s not clear that you or Anthony understand the paper you’re referencing.
““Here we show that the AMOC is resilient to extreme greenhouse gas and North Atlantic freshwater forcings across 34 climate models.””
I’m sure you don’t understand that this one sentence totally destroys any AMOC alarmism.
Not that I ever believed in any AMOC alarmism, but it is wise not to bank anything on a single paper.
I put no more store in this paper than I do in any other paper based on “climate models”. 😉
But those that live by the sword …. etc.
Baker et al., indicate the exact same climate impacts arising from the “non-collapse” of the AMOC as previous studies. Indeed they are using the same model experiments.
You mean “nothing”.
They are climate models.
They are meaningless. !
If you want to reject the paper because it is based on model experiments, that is fine, but it puts you at odds with Anthony, who endorses an (incorrect) interpretation of the paper’s findings.
Climate alarmists can’t take issue with models because that’s all they have to go on. The observational data says there has been modest warming [since 1800’s] but no evidence of a crisis. Even the AR6 doesn’t say “crisis” [or “existential”; nor does it condone Attribution in the absence of Detection].
In the Church of the Climate Crisis any follower who questioned the models would be labeled an apostate and immediately excommunicated. [no more grant funding, tenure; ie academic suicide] So its unsurprising that only climate crisis skeptics would question them.
Regarding Baker, et al [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08544-0 ]
they used CMIP6 modeling with either an abrupt 4x CO2 increase or 100yrs of freshwater infusion; neither are amenable to falsification. They’re just playing in
Model Land.
The real question climate crisis adherents are asking: How did these two seemlingly heretical studies get past Nature’s peer review process? Lol
So, given highly unlikely future trajectories (4 x CO2 or 100years of freshwater intrusion), the AMOC is still resilient. Well, rerun the “experiments” with 8 x CO2, or 200 years of freshwater intrusion. In short, if you don’t get the answer you want, just double down.
“Science advocates” must only advocate the use of the scientific method.
All models are wrong, some are useful.
Therefore, everything else said about model results is a belief, not science.
“All models are wrong, some are useful.”
Thing with climate models is that no-one has any idea which ones are actually “useful” (except for climate propaganda)
Which to all intents, makes them all totally USELESS.
You’re missing the point entirely. I don’t love the climate modeling study, I’m asking why it isn’t news when it’s something you don’t want to hear.
This study is aligned with previous studies.
This model study is aligned with previous model studies, you mean.
Yes, contrary to what Anthony says.
So AMOC alarmism dies a natural death.
If it’s bleeds it leads. Otherwise it has to push the narrative.
The Guardian did actually cover it I think yesterday – I was going to mention it as a story tip given how rare it is for the G to publish something like this
However, we mustn’t get too excited, they added so many caveats and quotes from their go-to pre-programmed scientists that by the end you are left wondering if the Earth itself will not implode by tomorrow
They are masters of disinformation or misinformation or lying as its better known – while accusing others of the same
I saw that too
I loved how they were trying to turn the story around in the last couple of paragraphs, reassuring their credulous readership (average age 13) that they’re still going to be burned alive by a 3 degree temperature rise in the very near future
Death cultists, all of them.
True
‘ocean currents are complex, influenced by a variety of natural cycles, and not as fragile as alarmist narratives suggest.’
Most ocean currents, such as the AMO, PDO, etc. are part of the global conveyor belt. These ocean currents have a periodicity of the order of 65 years. Using a quick order of magnitude calculation I would estimate that the quantity of water involved in the global conveyor belt is of the order of 4 x 10^16 tonnes, moving at a few cm/s.
Has anybody thought to calculate the forces that would be required to affect the movement of this mass of water? Is it even remotely possible that the forces caused by ‘man made climate change’ are capable of altering these ocean currents in only a few years?
You right for most of us skeptics we understand that for so called “Climate Scientist” math is hard. They rather
play computer gamesrun models, rather than do field work, collect data and do math.Such a model would have to include the spatio temporal processes enveloping the earth’s surfaces, including turbulent aerodynamics, heat and mass transfer from convection, diffusion, radiation, it would have to models the transfer of mass and heat between different phases, liquid, gas, solid via adsorption, absorption, phase changes like evaporation and condensation, it would need to include all chemical reactions to properly model mass conservation, and on and on
Now, most of the process will not be understood or poorly understood so writing down all constitutive laws is impossible. A lot of lumped parameters will be needed, more than an average climate scientist can count to
Unfortunately, even if this were possible, there’s not way it can be solved by any computer known to man. You couldn’t even mesh it
Even if that were possible, we left out all the stochasticity, all the dynamic equilibria, all the seasonal (periodic) variations, and other things that I do not know.
So that requires some approach in which there is a deterministic trend that you can’t properly model using physical laws because you don’t understand all the physics and chemistry and it’s impossible to solve on a computer anyway, together with many very disparate stochastic forcing terms or sources, which you also don’t fully understand, or don’t understand at all
And after all that we forgot the oceans, mountains, forests, animals….
Anyone who places any trust at all in these models is insane, or stupid, or both
Probably the least insane approach would be a time series analysis, but only with a very restricted horizon. In other words, weather forecasts
A general observation. There has been a lot of scare recycling among the alarmists recently. Extreme heat, Greenland Ice Sheet tipping point, AMOC dying. Their problem is all have been refuted before, and it is easy to do so again.
After 40 years, all they can do is shoot more blanks—so we are likely closer to the end than the beginning of the green scam.
One hopes.
50 cents a word for cutting and pasting old articles is pretty good pay in today’s gig journalism industry.
Very nice Anthony.
Speaking of propaganda outlets –
https://www.nysun.com/article/wikipedia-co-founder-urges-trump-and-musk-to-investigate-federal-worker-editing-of-online-encyclopedia-on-taxpayers-dime
Story tip.
Yeah… but has it been BBC Verified?
/sarc
Journalism is a business and good news doesn’t sell.
Also, they want to sell a narrative.
According to perplexity it takes 1000 years for the AMOC to go around once. That’s a lot of inertia.
‘According to perplexity it takes 1000 years for the AMOC to go around once.’
I’m not so sure about Perplexity. According to NOAA, the velocity of the Global Conveyor Belt is ‘a few centimeters per second’. If we take 5 cm/s with a 100 000 km path length, we would get a cycle time of 63.5 years. This is remarkably close the periodicity of about 67 years that we see in global ocean cycles.
I would like to suggest that what controls the periodicity of the global ocean cycles is indeed the path length of the Global Conveyor Belt.
A bit before my time but I’ll consult the ancestors and get back on that. It’s a neat half pic of the globe with the pretty red and blue arrows though. What are they measuring now? Numbers of US Republican and Democrat voters taking cruises to better target their advertising?
>> Why Isn’t the Mainstream Media Reporting that Ocean Circulation Is Doing Well?That could be because they choose to listen alarmists .. for now.
I am not sure if I can recommend doing so, but if you would go over to RealClimate, you can read Rahmstorf writing on this topic (https://www.realclimate.org/)
An Jan 26 20205 he wrote
“”Thus I consider CMIP6 models as less suited to test how well the ‘cold blob’ works as AMOC indicator than the CMIP5 models.””
(to evaluate his statement, you need to consider that CMIP6 models not only have a significantly higher spatial resolution, but also the aerosol-cloud physics was changed, CMIP5 are basically a low quality copy of CMIP6 with faults.. his claim seems uh “a bit outlandish”)
However, a month later on Feb 26 2025, he apparently changed his mind on CMIP6 models, after seeing Baker et al. succeeding where he apparently failed, he writes
“”What previous studies have labelled an ‘AMOC collapse’ is now called ‘no collapse’.””
You may think about this whatever you like..
I am pretty sure you can get some strange ocean behavior in some models with unrealistic forcings, especially given the current practice to filter simulation results before presenting them, which is a distortion of the statistics and very unscientific behavior (try selling con tossing statistics to your friends and tell them you did not consider head-throws.. that will not go too well). Me only questions for this are, how did you even get funding for such nonsense` and was the editor asleep?
In the tradition of Climategate, fire the editor.
The movement of water in the oceans (which are heated from below) is chaotic.
Anybody claiming they can predict the future state of a chaotic system like the aquasphere, the atmosphere or even the lithosphere, is either a fool, a fraud or just plainly gullible.
No publicity needed – one guess about the future is as good as another. The future is unknowable – it’s in the future!
Guess away.
Oh they are busy guessing and getting the message out but it all means you’re still doomed-
Melting ice hits brake on world’s strongest sea current