There’s an interesting article by Professor Stefan Rahmstorf on Real Climate about this, he points out the new study is the same as his, the debate is over what is an AMOC collapse ? not a change in an understanding of the physics.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/how-will-media-report-on-this-new-amoc-study/
This new paper does not (and does not claim to) contradict earlier modeling studies about future AMOC changes and their climatic impact, as one of the authors (Richard Wood) has confirmed to me (we are presently both attending an AMOC workshop in Utrecht). It’s the same models, showing the same things – just the wording is different. What previous studies have labelled an ‘AMOC collapse’ is now called ‘no collapse’. It’s essentially a discussion about semantics, not physics. Do you call it an AMOC collapse if a weak and shallow wind-driven overturning persists after the thermohaline part has collapsed? Or not?
Stefan can be found on Mastodon @[email protected]
The next 2 generations might not witness the great collapse. What a relief!
Fuck the other generations though
/s
Not really, see here
So, disaster postponed. But just reading this improved my mood, slightly. It’s interesting how easy it is to cling to little bits of sort-of good news like this. We humans are notoriously irrational and prone to biases (like optimism). Which then begs the question: what if the cumulative effect of these micro-tidbits of good news is to help us to… continue doing almost nothing about it all?
