Important ocean currents that redistribute heat, cold and precipitation between the tropics and the northernmost parts of the Atlantic region will shut down around the year 2060 if current greenhouse gas emissions persist. This is the conclusion based on new calculations that contradict the latest report from the IPCC.

Does anybody know if such a collapse would happen instantaneous or more gradual? With the massive amount of water in motion it feels like it would take a long time to stop, or are fluids behaving differently?

  •  alcyoneous   ( @alcyoneous@beehaw.org ) 
    1•11 months ago

    I don’t think there really is a “stable” state that we can point to, just because it is always changing based on the climate conditions, and we have very imperfect data for talking about what it was like even a century ago. I’m also not certain that we haven’t hit a tipping point, from what I’ve read we’ve started to enter positive feedback loops climate wise, so the Earth would keep warming a bit and then stabilize to a warmer-than-it-should-be level even if we stopped polluting now. That would definitely continue to impact the currents.