AMOC - The Climate Change Impending Disaster you've never heard about.

Actually you do know what AMOC is - it's the Gulf Stream. But you probably don't know just how important it is. You almost certainly don't know what would happen if it stopped working properly. Therefore, if you are quite a bit younger than me, you aren't aware just how it's failure may well affect you. I'll hopefully be long gone.

 

It's a "conveyor belt bringing nutrients, oxygen and heat north from tropical waters, while moving colder water south — a balancing act that keeps the Northern Hemisphere warm". It has switched off in the past & the scientific concensus is that it is dangerously close to doing so again with massive consequences. Climate Change is causing it to slow now. 

This week a report was published saying "the risk of collapse has been "greatly underestimated" and will have "devastating and irreversible impacts" for the world". There are 2 possibilities;-

• Dansgaard-Oeschger events, leading to a sudden warming over Greenland, 10 to 15 degrees Celsius [18 to 27 F] within a decade

• Heinrich events, big ice discharges into the northern Atlantic 

The science is beyond my pay grade, but it is real & there has been a concern for over 50 years. I can remember it in the 60's.

The effects would be far reaching. " Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Iceland, would likely get several degrees colder and also drier. Southern Europe would still be warm and Northern Europe would be cool. These temperature differences drive extreme weather events, bringing a lot more variability and storms. The sea level would also rise by up to half a meter [1.6 feet] in the northern Atlantic in addition to the global average rise that is happening anyway".

Ocean carbon dioxide uptake would be affected. "If the overturning circulation stops, that CO2 will stay near the surface and quickly equilibrate with the atmosphere. That would make [C02 concentrations] rise faster in the atmosphere".

"An oxygen-depleted ocean it would disrupt the entire web of life in the northern Atlantic, and that would disrupt fisheries".

"In the Southern Hemisphere, greenhouse warming would get worse".

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/we-dont-really-consider-it-low-probability-anymore-collapse-of-key-atlantic-current-could-have-catastrophic-impacts-says-oceanographer-stefan-rahmstorf

We have messed with our planet heedlessly for decades. Ever since we stopped being nomadic & settled. But the huge unsustainable rape of resources that I have seen in my lifetime has been exponential. 

We humans are literally destroying our habitat & everything in it. 

We really do need to wake up & understand what our children & grandchildren are facing if we don't take serious action.