The AMOC ocean current system in the North Atlantic is weakening and approaching a tipping point. If the AMOC Currents collapse, it will be much colder and snowier conditions to Northern Europe in the winter, sea level rise on the US East Coast, and warmer temperatures in places like Antarctica. Severe snow and flooding would be seen in parts of Europe and Western Africa would have permnant drought conditions. This would be very devastating for the future of our planet.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/envir ... c-news.htm
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- frmrCapCadet
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Re: AMOC Ocean Currents Near a Tipping Point
The science of the gigantic ocean currents goes back and forth on this. I understand there are no adequate mathematical models, and even data is more sparse than needed. Lots of work being done on this, of course.
Re: AMOC Ocean Currents Near a Tipping Point
True, its not like the Earth has one giant switch labelled "hunky-dory" and "you're fucked", but having a lazzais-faire attitude is how we got into this situation in the first place. Like when do we start not being jerks to the planet? Where is the line in the sand?
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- readytotaxi
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Re: AMOC Ocean Currents Near a Tipping Point
As a Species we seem to have convinced ourselves that we can can control Mother nature with the application of science. Never gonna win that one. 
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- flyingturtle
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Re: AMOC Ocean Currents Near a Tipping Point
frmrCapCadet wrote:The science of the gigantic ocean currents goes back and forth on this. I understand there are no adequate mathematical models, and even data is more sparse than needed. Lots of work being done on this, of course.
I'm not specialized in climate change, but in science there is usually little debate. There's only "back and forth" on a topic when two schools of thought have comparable methods and databases to put their hypotheses on. This happens for example in archeology, where you want to find out more on the lifestyle of a prehistoric group of people. True, you can identify isotopes that remain in bones and teeth. You can say where somebody has grown up with an astonishing accuracy. But what if you've only found one skeleton...?
Climate science? You have one big body, IPCC, which can shove a lot of resources into computational models, which improve year for year. Also, we get better measurements every year - for example, every year we use more robotic probes that float (and dive) in all the oceans to measure temperatures, drift and salinity.
In science, we are never not 100% sure, but from good methods and high-quality data springs predictions we can pretty much trust.
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- frmrCapCadet
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Re: AMOC Ocean Currents Near a Tipping Point
Ocean current computer models are still in early stages. IIRC there is little confidence in their results by the scientific community.
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