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Dozens of scientists have warned of the potentially ‘devastating and irreversible’ breakdown of the Gulf Stream – the ocean current that keeps Derry and Donegal temperate and mild.
Experts from around the globe have submitted a hard-hitting letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers flagging a ‘serious risk of a major ocean circulation change in the Atlantic’ in the decades to come.
“A string of scientific studies in the past few years suggests that this risk has so far been greatly underestimated. Such an ocean circulation change would have devastating and irreversible impacts especially for Nordic countries, but also for other parts of the world,” the letter states.
The scientists refer to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) – a key component of which is the Gulf Stream – which draws warm ocean water from the Caribbean, keeping Derry and Donegal relatively warm for our latitude which is as northerly as Siberia.
“The AMOC, the dominant mechanism of northward heat transport in the North Atlantic, determines life conditions for all people in the Arctic region and beyond and is increasingly at risk of passing a tipping point,” the authors state.
Tipping point risks can occur within the 1.5-2°C climate range of the Paris Agreement, the scientists argue, while the world is heading well beyond this range at more than 2.5°C.
The letter was sent to the Nordic Council of Ministers, a forum established to promote cooperation between the Nordic countries.
AMOC collapse, the risk of which the authors argue has been underestimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), would lead to Irish temperatures plummeting.
Derry and Donegal could suffer an annual mean temperature change of up to -2.4°C in ‘an idealised future CO2 doubling scenario in which the AMOC has fully collapsed’.
“The impacts particularly on Nordic Countries would likely be catastrophic, including major cooling in the region while surrounding regions warm.
“This would be an enlargement and deepening of the ‘cold blob’ that already has developed over the subpolar Atlantic Ocean, and likely lead to unprecedented extreme weather.
“While the impacts on weather patterns, ecosystems and human activities warrant further study, they would potentially threaten the viability of agriculture in northwestern Europe,” the scientists state.
The authors have urged the ‘Nordic countries to increase pressure for greater urgency and priority in the global effort to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, in order to stay close to the 1.5 °C target set by the Paris Agreement’.
The open letter follows a paper published last year by Peter Ditlevsen and Susanne Ditlevsen, from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, that concluded the AMOC could collapse anywhere between 2025 and 2100.
A 2021 study by the the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth, suggested the Gulf Stream system would weaken further, by 34-45 per cent by 2100.
The message in this week’s letter to the Nordic Council is stark: “Given the increasing evidence for a higher risk of an AMOC collapse, we believe it is of critical importance that Arctic tipping point risks, in particular the AMOC risk, are taken seriously in governance and policy. Even with a medium likelihood of occurrence, given that the outcome would be catastrophic and impacting the entire world for centuries to come, we believe more needs to be done to minimize this risk.”
This post was originally published on here
