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Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early as 2025
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAnyone familiar with how this will impact climate in Western Europe, from say Portugal to western France?
- XorNot 3y agoThe Gulf Stream is responsible for the temperate climate of Europe which enables the swathe of farmland that it has. A slowdown is expected to lead to a temperature drop from artic air being able to circulate further down, which would shorten growing seasons and probably change farmland distribution. The effect of this happening over individual human generations in an environment where established farmland is hundreds to thousands of years old would be considerably expensive to adapt to.
- non-chalad 3y agoHow did humanity respond the last time this happened?
- VelesDude 3y agoThere is no history of this happening before, at least not on the time frames we are talking about here. This is thousands of years of change in decades. It isn't so much just the change but the pace that is the issue. Like how jumping off a building and taking the elevator achieve the same amount of change but on a very different time frame and thus very different results.
- non-chalad 3y agoDo we know how the Gulf Stream worked during the last ice age maximum, when the Rhine river still flowed over land-locked British Channel (1)? 1. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f1e7378b962d42168fdefec3b6eb8b5f https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f1e7378b962d42168fd...
- VelesDude 3y agoThat is a good question but I suspect we wouldn't know. Just educated guesses and I cannot find those at the moment. I think the other big issue is that back then we didn't have industrial civilization and high level agriculture dependent on specific environmental factors.
- ang_cire 3y agoWe weren't agrarian back then, we were still hunting stuff with sticks and simple stone tools (12,000 years ago/ 10,000 BCE).
- VelesDude 3y agoIt isn't so much that the overall temperatures will change too much when averaged out, that would relate more to the slow down/stopping of the AMOC. First order effect, this would mean that you get less predictable weather events. Essentially, heat domes and artic blasts become much more persistent, sticking around for weeks or even months (worst case) rather than just brief periods. Second order, A month long heat wave can kill a lot of crops followed by a month low wet spell that can completely flood the same area. Third order effect, In metropolitan areas this is an inconvenience. For the food system, this is deadly. Forth order effect, a fragile food system that feeds the metropolitan areas - things get dicey fast. Tough times, tough leaders, rise of authoritarianism etc. May you live in interesting times.
- hackerlight 3y agoThe fourth order effect is overlooked and it's my biggest short-term concern. In particular the destabilizing of low income countries near the equator in the face of precarious wet bulb temperatures, indirectly leading to the destabilizing of the global north in response to climate refugees fleeing the equator.
- VelesDude 3y agoShort term that is the biggest issue that I fear. I am in Australia and I have said it for many years, if it goes badly, we will welcome refugees with open arms. Those arms being machine guns and explosives. That we will move into the realm of Lifeboat ethics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics I do hope that do not take this path as it would become the greatest moment of shame for our whole species.
- magicalhippo 3y agoFrom the paper: While the entire globe has warmed, the subpolar North Atlantic has resisted and even cooled. This is exactly the region where the AMOC delivers much of its heat, and exactly the region where climate models have long predicted cooling as a result of the AMOC slowing down. [A] cold subpolar North Atlantic correlates with summer heat in Europe (Duchez et al., 2016). For example, in summer 2015, the subpolar Atlantic was the coldest since records began in the nineteenth century— while Europe suffered a strong heatwave. Subsequent study has shown that heatwaves are increasing three to four times faster in Europe than in other regions of the Northern Hemisphere [...]
- dogma1138 3y agoWestern Europe is a misnomer. Most of it should be all called Northern Europe and North of Northern Europe. Paris sits between Vancouver and Seattle. London is the same latitude as Calgary. Hamburg is at the same latitude as Edmonton. If the golf stream slows downs or gets diverted north towards Greenland much of Europe will freeze.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIndeed, this was the intent of my inquiry: what will climate look like for the next 100 years between certain latitudes in Western Europe (Porto vs Lisbon, Madrid and Bilbao vs Valencia, Malaga and Sevilla, Bordeaux vs Toulouse, etc).
- dogma1138 3y agoPortugal is quite up north too, Porto is the same latitude as Chicago, Lisbon is the same latitude as DC.
- lm28469 3y agoThat's not how geography works... Do you consider Sao Polo to be in north America because Johannesburg is more southern?
- dogma1138 3y agoNo, and it’s clear that it wasn’t my point so don’t be silly or obtuse. People don’t realize how far north most of Europe is because of its very temperate climate powered by the golf stream. Everything from the English Channel up to the Baltics should be much much colder than it is. The daily mean temperature in London is around 6c in January vs lower than -8c in Calgary. The record low temperatures in London are higher than the mean daily minimum in Calgary. Besides the impact on things like farming the infrastructure of many European cities isn’t built to withstand the winters it may have in a few decades.
- lm28469 3y ago
- fire_lake 3y agoOne way to get rough idea is to compare regions that are similarly far north but without a Gulf Stream. E.g. UK and Canada.
- magicalhippo 3y agoLink to paper (open access): https://tos.org/oceanography/article/is-the-atlantic-overturning-circulation-approaching-a-tipping-point https://tos.org/oceanography/article/is-the-atlantic-overtur...
- euroderf 3y agoHighly recommended. The paper is an excellent overview and exploration of the topic.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoClarification because the headline is written to mislead: "Their model suggests that the current could begin collapsing anywhere from 2025 to 2095."
- VelesDude 3y agoOilprice.com is always like that. Everything always sounds urgent regardless of the actual content. The 2025 date while possible, is much less likely than a middle of the range date. That said, with the rate that dates relating to climate issues keep getting moved forwards, I would be surprised if in 5 years we dates like between 2030-2060 being proposed.
- Guthur 3y agoAnd when it doesn't harken well move on to some other hyperbolic doomsday, this has literally been going on for thousands of years. Humans have constantly, hubristically , predicting the end of the planet and humanity based on the existence of humanity for millennia. They are selling, always selling.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoYeah the way it rhymes with an apocalypse cult is pretty interesting. (Not asserting that it is an apocalypse cult of course)
- VelesDude 3y agoThere is a decent book on this called 'Apocalypse Not' by John Michael Greer that covers the history of all these end times predictions. Good thing for putting these kinds of claims in perspective. Yes, we have big issues facing us, some we can solve, some we can merely respond too. But we have to be mindful about some of the alarmist language that can be used. While many want to alarm people into action, it can also become fear that paralyze folks from doing any action.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
- anonymousiam 3y agoSome good questions from this year-old article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-simulations-question-gulf-stream-role-tempering-europes-winters/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-simulations-q...
- Hock88sdx 3y agoThe Day after Tomorrow? We have a decade of public warning.
- mapt 3y agoI don't know whether the article is especially relevant, but sea surface temperatures have gone absolutely nuts for the past year and so anything we would have called a crazy model five years ago is now on the table. https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ We spent most of 2023 (April to December) 4 to 5 standard deviations above the mean for 1981-2011. This year has been higher than Q1 2023's figures by a considerable margin. This might have something to do with decreasing sulphur dioxide concentrations from switching shipping over to cleaner fuel, or it might not.
- silverquiet 3y agoI look at that chart too often for my own good. I don't know how people can look at that and think that we can continue as usual, though I do understand that at the end of the day, what's an individual supposed to do?