The Atlantic Ocean Circulation carries relatively warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to northwestern Europe. Image: Sven Baars, University of Groningen

The Atlantic current won’t come to a full stop the day after tomorrow. But it could face a temporary halt later this century.

European scientists think they have settled one of the more alarming questions of the climate crisis: the potential collapse of the Atlantic current, the Gulf Stream that delivers heat from the tropics to the Arctic.

The answer is clear. Total collapse is not likely for another 1000 years. But there is roughly a one in six chance in the next century that the flow of the north Atlantic current may temporarily halt or falter because of climate change.

That is because faster melting of the Greenland ice cap, and more freshwater in the Arctic Ocean, could trigger a slowdown in what scientists like to call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

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And a team of US researchers has separately highlighted one of the potential mechanisms of ocean change: for every 1°C rise in average global temperature, there will be roughly six days fewer on which many of the world’s rivers are frozen, which will mean more freshwater in the northern seas.

The findings are based in the first case on sophisticated use of computer simulations, and in the second on the careful study of 400,000 satellite images collected over more than 30 years.

“The Dutch scientists now think that the likelihood of even a temporary halt is only 15%. This is more or less the chance offered in the grim game of Russian roulette”

Researchers from the universities of Groningen and Utrecht say, in the journal Scientific Reports, that they modelled the likelihood and impact of small changes in the flow of freshwater into the ocean at high latitudes.

The Atlantic current – sometimes called the Gulf Stream – is a massive flow of warm, salty water from the tropics to the Arctic that keeps  northwestern Europe much warmer than, for example, the same latitudes of North America.

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As the water flows north, it cools and becomes more dense, and begins to sink below the fresh meltwater of the summer Arctic: the cold, dense, salty water then flows along the sea bed southwards, and this one dramatic global oceanic conveyor belt ultimately delivers nutrients and dissolved oxygen to the Southern Ocean. It also stores dissolved carbon dioxide, distributes heat and moderates high latitude weather.

But in the past 150 years the flow has been weakening, and there have been fears that the circulation could halt entirely, with unforeseeable consequences. This notional failure became the trigger for a 2004 disaster movie called The Day After Tomorrow. Something so sudden and catastrophic as the Hollywood version was never going to happen – but there have been repeated fears that the weakening could continue, and tip the planet’s climate into a new and potentially dangerous state.

The Dutch scientists now think that the likelihood of even a temporary halt is only 15%. This is more or less the chance offered in the grim game of Russian roulette, in which a player spins a six-chambered revolver with one bullet in it, and points it at his or her head.

River ice lost

Their model simulated small changes in the delivery of freshwater. This is likely to accelerate however, according to research in the journal Nature. Researchers combed through 407,880 satellite pictures taken between 1984 and 2018, to find that 56% of rivers were affected by winter freezing, which masked altogether 87,000 square kilometres of water surface.

Freezing is important to both humans and wild things: frozen rivers traditionally have provided good surfaces for ground transport in the high latitudes. The act of freezing also regulates greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise escape from the rivers. Ice-jams during the spring melt can trigger flooding, which – though damaging to human settlements – spreads fresh water, nutrients and sediments around the flood plains.

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But these benefits are at risk. The researchers found that river and lake surfaces were freezing ever later, as global temperatures crept up, and that the world had lost 2.5% of its river ice in the last 30 years.

If the world’s nations stick to the agreement reached in Paris in 2015 and contain global heating to just 2°C above the average for most of human history, then by the end of the century the world could see a reduction of another 16 days in the length of ice cover, compared with the present, they calculate.

If they achieve the Paris ideal of no more than 1.5°C, this extra ice-free period could be reduced to just over seven days. Right now, global average temperatures are already 1°C above the historic average, and the planet is on course for a warming by the end of the century of more than 3°C. − Climate News Network