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Extreme Climate Impacts from Collapse of AMOC Could Be Worse Than Expected
Disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current could freeze Europe, scorch the tropics and increase sea level rise in the North Atlantic. The tipping point may be closer than predicted in the IPCC’s latest assessment.
Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesWithout warm water flowing toward the Arctic, he added, winter sea ice could expand as far south as England, and some regions of Europe would quickly dry out and cool by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius per decade. Some of the projected impacts would be nearly impossible to adapt to, said Peter Ditlevsen, an ice and climate researcher with the University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute and the author of a 2023 paper in Nature Communications that warned of a mid-century AMOC tipping point. Another 2023 study by led by Australian oceanographer Matt England showed the Southern Hemisphere AMOC engine may also be failing, for the same reason as in the Arctic—an increase of Antarctic meltwater that disrupts the vertical part of the circulation by hindering the formation of heavier “abyssal” water that then drives currents horizontally across the seafloor.
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