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February 2, 2025 at 08:01AM

The AMOC Quarrel

By Frank Bosse

(Translated from the original at Klimanachrichten)

We have kept you, dear readers, very promptly informed about AMOC conjectures.

Recently, we also informed you about a new study that found a stable Atlantic overturning circulation since the 1960s. It is not the only one in the recent past.

However, Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is a great advocate of the “The Day after Tomorrow” scenario of a collapsing oceanic current. As recently as June, 2024, he noted on X (formerly Twitter) that the AMOC mitigation saga “is even more dramatic than it ever was”.

He himself had been responsible for a whole series of papers as author or co-author, which also contributed to the scenario, and he initiated an “open letter” in the fall of 2024 that dramatically addressed politicians. We also reported on this.

Of course, the new findings could not couldn’t pass him by without comment. Under the headline “The AMOC is slowing down, is stable, yes, no, no, yes…” he commented on it on the blog “Real Climate”, which is run by scientists, including himself, Gavin Schmidt from NASA, and others.

What he has to say there can be stated in a nutshell: He defends his approaches and lists the problems of the more recent studies. That was to be expected. For example, he emphasizes that the new climate models (CMIP 6) hardly show any connection between “his fingerprint”, the sea surface temperatures of the “warming hole” in the North Atlantic (see the article here from 17 January 2025) and the actual current, but that the approximately 4 years older ones called CMIP5 do. He also questions whether the new ones are really more reliable in this respect than the older ones. However, the effort for the former was considerable.

He summarized:

I don’t believe that the newer methods are more reliable than the old ones (his, the author). … However, since we don’t have measurements going back far enough, there is still some uncertainty in this respect…“

And that’s the crux of the matter! He “doesn’t believe” in all honor, but knowledge in science would probably be more adequate! And yes, everything is uncertain and “nothing precise is known”.

This is also stated by the well-known oceanologist Carl Wunsch in a paper published in August 2022:

In the coming decades, continuous monitoring of the entire coupled ocean-atmosphere system will be necessary to assess the true risks of AMOC collapse, but to date there is no evidence of imminent or overwhelming danger.“

There are many assumptions, a lot of back and forth in science and, when viewed in the light of day, a lot of “belief” or “non-belief”, i.e. the unmistakable indication of a lack of knowledge.

So when you, dear reader, are once again told by a trained psychologist in a news magazine that there is “an imminent danger in a few decades if things go badly” (see here) or here: “Europe’s heating is weakening”: be careful, people are pretending a ‘certainty’ that simply does not exist. As I said, it’s not seldom about assumptions and belief or non-belief.

Also Prof. Rahmstorf rushed to say: “The Gulf Stream system is failing”, and not “The Gulf Stream system” could “somehow, somewhere, sometime” stall, the northern branch, the AMOC is perhaps stable or no, or yes (according to his own blog headline).

Image: generated with the KNMI Climate Explorer.

The AMOC is still in excellent health today, as the measurements from 2004 onwards show; these are the actual “hard facts”.

We should finally stop scaring people in the Atlantic, it doesn’t work with enlightened citizens like you, dear readers.

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February 2, 2025 at 05:48AM

This is a recurring theme at the BBC, despite what they admit is a lack of evidence to support it, or in their words ‘huge uncertainties’. Typical alarmist ‘what if’ speculation in other words, ignoring recent findings. We refer them to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study cited in our recent post: Critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years, AMOC study finds. Despite that the BBC says ‘Amoc appears to be getting weaker’. It goes on to talk about tipping points, but again we refer them to recent work: Scientists question use of ‘tipping point’ metaphor in climate change discussions.
– – –
Of all the possible climate futures, there’s a scenario where the United Kingdom and north-west Europe buck the trend of global warming and instead face plunging temperatures and freezing winters, says the BBC.

It’s not the most likely outcome, but a number of scientists fear that the chance of it happening is growing, and that the consequences would be so great that it deserves proper consideration.

They are concerned that the ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic could weaken – or even collapse – in response to climate change. [Talkshop comment – climate change IS a response].

Huge uncertainties remain about when – or even whether – a collapse could happen. So, how likely is it, and what would it mean?
. . .
But Amoc appears to be getting weaker.

We don’t know for sure, because direct and continuous measurements of Amoc strength have only been taken since 2004. That’s not long enough to be able to identify a definite change.

But indirect evidence suggests it could have already slowed by around 15% over the last couple of centuries, although not all scientists agree.

One indication is the sediments on the ocean floor. Larger grains indicate a stronger current. By measuring the size of the grains and calculating their age, scientists can estimate how much Amoc has slowed over time.

Another piece of evidence is the so-called ‘cold blob’ or ‘warming hole’ in the north Atlantic. This describes a region which appears to have cooled in recent decades, unlike the vast majority of the world.

A slowdown in Amoc – meaning less warmer water would be transported to this region – is seen as a possible culprit.

This is “a very clear signature and footprint of a classic Amoc slowdown” says Matthew England, professor of oceanography at the University of New South Wales.
. . .
Where might the tipping point be?
No one really knows how close it may be.

In 2021, the IPCC said it had “medium confidence” that Amoc would not collapse abruptly this century, although it expected it to weaken.

But some more recent studies have pointed to a growing possibility of Amoc passing a tipping point in the coming decades, beyond which full collapse would be inevitable.

Each study comes with various caveats and uncertainties, and different climate models can give different results for a system as complex as Amoc.

“We don’t believe the idea of an Amoc collapse this century has substantially changed because of these new results,” cautions Dr Laura Jackson, oceanographer at the Met Office.

Full article here.
– – –
Image credit: researchgate.net

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February 2, 2025 at 05:15AM

By Paul Homewood

For some reason, AEP forgot to mention this in his article the other day!

While AEP was praising China to the sky, claiming that “China that is running away with the prize” of decarbonisation, the next day his colleague at the Telegraph, Jonathan Leake, told the truth:

Ed Miliband may be agonising over the success of net zero but Xi Jinping has no such scruples.

In a bid to meet soaring electricity demand, the Chinese premier is overseeing plans to burn more coal than ever before – increasing the country’s annual usage by an extra 75m tonnes.

The planned increase in coal production will undoubtedly strengthen China’s position as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases, with the country already emitting the equivalent of 15bn tonnes of carbon a year – almost a quarter of the world’s total.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/01/xi-jinpings-coal-burning-blitz-is-making-the-dream-net-zero/

Maybe AEP would like to explain why China needs all this coal, now they have got all these super cheap solar panels!

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February 2, 2025 at 04:11AM