The study was carried out in the Nordic Sea. (Getty)
“Every year brings something new for the Arctic Ocean,” NSIDC senior research scientist Walt Meier said this year.
“This summer we saw very early ice loss in Hudson Bay, open water near the North Pole and a stubborn ice floe near the Bering Strait that persisted through the summer melt season. While it wasn’t a new record low, this year’s sea ice minimum is yet another example of a changed Arctic environment.”
What could happen to the AMOC and why does it matter?
If the AMOC abruptly stopped, as the ice cores from 100,000 years ago suggest it might, Europe, including the UK, would rapidly become cooler.
Temperatures could drop by up to 10 degrees and the coast of Scotland would be frozen in sea ice.
The AMOC is a ‘system of systems’, Ezat explained, but the prospect of it weakening and collapsing is alarming.
Ezat said: “One clear reason for being worried is that we learned from looking at past climate change, including my recent study, that the AMOC could change dramatically on human-relevant time scales. And we know that a collapse or weakening of this system could result in major cooling in Northern Europe.
“Also, it has serious global implications including possible disruptions of the seasonal monsoons. Changes in AMOC could also impact marine ecosystems and resources, including fishery.
“We know that severe weakening of the AMOC isn’t unlikely, and if it happens it will have serious implications to the high latitude regions and beyond.”
Much of the warming caused by man-made climate change is absorbed by the oceans, and over time, this could cause changes to currents such as the AMOC.
Some measurements suggest that the AMOC is already weakening, with some research suggesting it might hit a ‘tipping point’ where it rapidly changes.
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Publish date : 2024-10-30 16:56:00
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