>The Gulf Stream acts like a giant conveyor belt, transporting warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, which gives Western Europe its unusually mild climate. A collapse would disrupt this heat transfer, causing average temperatures in regions like the UK and Scandinavia to drop by as much as 10-15°C (18-27°F) in a short period. This would lead to much colder, harsher winters and potentially widespread crop failure due to freezing conditions and a shorter growing season. Ironically, while the rest of the world continues to warm, Europe would experience a rapid cooling.
I cannot overemphasize how epochal of a crisis this would be for human civilization - the gulf stream is pretty much the only thing keeping northern europe (The UK, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, parts of germany, the Netherlands, etc) habitable by current standards.
Basically, the gulf stream is a conveyor belt that grabs nice warm water from southern latitudes (carribean, southeast atlantic ocean) and slowly moves it up the east US/Canadian coast, when it then gently arches past the tip of Greenland and Iceland before splitting and arriving in northern Europe.
To get an idea of how big of a problem the gulf stream going away would be, look at the comparative latitude of the UK and the Nordic countries compared to north America. The UK is aligned with Newfoundland in Canada, where it gets more than a little chilly. The UK is currently nice and toasty because of the gulf stream. It would be an extremely uncomfortable place without it - no more agriculture as the UK knows it now, no more nice weather. Fishing grounds destroyed, etc. The general public doesn't seem to really understand the massive impact of a potential gulf stream shutdown.
Okay that's maybe dramatic, but on another hand, that would be quite fascinating to experience. Maybe, for those of us living long enough, we are going to witness a net migration not from Africa to Europe, but from Europe to elsewhere, anywhere. There is enough place on Earth for humans to resettle and it's likely that other places will become more hospitable, while other places will become less, as the climate shifts. Maybe the middle east will become just warm and hot, instead of extremely hot as it's currently - and maybe even, they will be done with tribal wars, who knows!
Europe is currently so hostile to receiving the people who need to move there that they might be surprised how much hostility they're met with if/when the tables turn.
Europe has the technology and experience to solve geo-social problems by turning itself into a cozy castle with high walls. The hostiles will be used as feedstock for alcalic hydrolysis at industrial scale/faster than replacement/birthing rate until the zones have been fully sanitized. Problems turned into fertilizer for nukkular powered greenhouses.
And this will of course affect ENSO giving us more El Niño action. So flooding here in California and more winter rain so all the skiers will have to water ski down the mountain. And the water gets warmer so if you thought the urchins were a problem now well just wait!
Title is clickbait. This is based on 25+ different models, the AMOC is not the Gulf Stream, the authors admit there’s a great deal of uncertainty, and the confidence intervals extend from 2023 to 2076 for the high emission scenario. Moreover, per the authors:
> If the AMOC starts to collapse, it takes more than 100 years to reach a substantially weaker state.
Better title would be “Simulations of Atlantic Meridonal Circulation Collapse Due to Climate Change”
But given the quite impressive track record of 100% failed predictions in the climate doom department I'm betting on the false vacuum imploding before the climate memes manifest.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 33.1 ms ] thread>The Gulf Stream acts like a giant conveyor belt, transporting warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, which gives Western Europe its unusually mild climate. A collapse would disrupt this heat transfer, causing average temperatures in regions like the UK and Scandinavia to drop by as much as 10-15°C (18-27°F) in a short period. This would lead to much colder, harsher winters and potentially widespread crop failure due to freezing conditions and a shorter growing season. Ironically, while the rest of the world continues to warm, Europe would experience a rapid cooling.
Basically, the gulf stream is a conveyor belt that grabs nice warm water from southern latitudes (carribean, southeast atlantic ocean) and slowly moves it up the east US/Canadian coast, when it then gently arches past the tip of Greenland and Iceland before splitting and arriving in northern Europe.
To get an idea of how big of a problem the gulf stream going away would be, look at the comparative latitude of the UK and the Nordic countries compared to north America. The UK is aligned with Newfoundland in Canada, where it gets more than a little chilly. The UK is currently nice and toasty because of the gulf stream. It would be an extremely uncomfortable place without it - no more agriculture as the UK knows it now, no more nice weather. Fishing grounds destroyed, etc. The general public doesn't seem to really understand the massive impact of a potential gulf stream shutdown.
> If the AMOC starts to collapse, it takes more than 100 years to reach a substantially weaker state.
Better title would be “Simulations of Atlantic Meridonal Circulation Collapse Due to Climate Change”
But given the quite impressive track record of 100% failed predictions in the climate doom department I'm betting on the false vacuum imploding before the climate memes manifest.