The Associated Press
Seth Borenstein
WASHINGTON–Global warming is likely slowing the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, which has plunged to its weakest level on record, according to a new study.
The slowdown in the circulation–a crucial part of Earth’s climate–had been predicted by computer models but researchers said they now can observe it.
It could make for more extreme weather across the Northern Hemisphere, especially Europe, and could increase sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast, they warned.
The slowdown also raises the prospect of a complete circulation shutdown, which would be a dangerous “tipping point,” according to a study in yesterday’s journal, “Nature.”
Such a shutdown was the premise of the scientifically-inaccurate 2004 disaster movie, “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Study authors said a collapse is at least decades away but would be a catastrophe.
“We know somewhere out there is a tipping point where this current system is likely to break down,” said study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
“We still don’t know how far away or close to this tipping point we might be. . . . This is uncharted territory.”
But some other scientists are skeptical, citing a scarcity of data.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, called AMOC, is a key conveyor belt for ocean water and air, creating weather.
Warm salty water moves north from the tropics along the Gulf Stream off the U.S. East Coast to the North Atlantic, where it cools, sinks, and heads south.
The faster it moves, the more water is turned over from warm surface to cool depths.
“This overturning circulation redistributes heat on our planet,” said study lead author Levke Caesar, a physicist at the Potsdam Institute.
“It brings heat from the tropics to the high latitudes.”
The Caesar study and another one published in the same issue of “Nature” by a different team indicate the Atlantic’s circulation is the weakest it’s been in about 1,500 years.
And the slowdown is intensifying.
Since the middle of the 20th century, the speed at which the ocean moves water in the AMOC has dropped 15 percent, the study found, using cold subpolar water temperatures as an indirect measurement.
And it has plummeted in recent years, the study concluded.
The Gulf Stream, the warm water current where hurricanes can power up, historically veers away from the United States around the Carolinas or Virginia.
It now hugs closer to coast around New York, and there’s a significantly warmer bulge around Maine related to the circulation slowdown, both Rahmstorf and Caesar said.
The northern U.S. Atlantic coastal waters have warmed faster than most parts of the ocean in recent decades, researchers said.
Scientists blame global warming in a couple of ways.
Warmer water lessens the amount of cooling and makes it harder for the water to sink and turn over.
Meanwhile, ice sheets and glaciers in Greenland are melting and the fresh water is pouring into the area where the water turns over, making it less salty, less dense, and therefore less likely to sink.
There’s also more rain and snow in northern areas and more evaporation in southern areas, altering the flow, Rahmstorf noted.
“It’s a slow change at the moment but we’re changing it,” Caesar stressed.
“One danger is in the unknown of what will happen,” he added. “We should expect changes.”
