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The AMOC is slowing, it’s stable, it’s slowing, no, yes, …

Real Climate

2018 (Fig. 2018 (our Fig. Of the 24 CMIP6 models, a full 23 underestimate the sea surface cooling in the ‘cold blob’ And most of the CMIP6 models even show a strengthening of the AMOC in the historic period, which past studies have shown to be linked to strong aerosol forcing in many of these models (e.g.

Ocean 351
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The water south of Greenland has been cooling, so what causes that?

Real Climate

Sea surface temperature trend 1993 – 2018, from European Atlas of the Seas. An AMOC weakening by 15 % thus cools the region at a rate of 0.15 x 10 14 W and according to model simulations can fully explain the observed cooling trend (2). Let’s compare two possibilities by a back-of-envelope calculation. (1)

Cooling 344
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What is happening in the Atlantic Ocean to the AMOC?

Real Climate

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a large-scale overturning motion of the entire Atlantic, from the Southern Ocean to the high north. Graph by Ruijian Gou. The AMOC is a big deal for climate. It moves around 15 million cubic meters of water per second (i.e. 15 Sverdrup).

Ocean 246
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New study suggests the Atlantic overturning circulation AMOC “is on tipping course”

Real Climate

The paper results from a major computational effort, based on running a state-of-the-art climate model (the CESM model with horizontal resolution 1° for the ocean/sea ice and 2° for the atmosphere/land component) for 4,400 model years. Nature 2018. Figure adapted from Caesar et al.,

Ocean 364
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The AMOC: tipping this century, or not?

Real Climate

2018 ( PDF ; I’m a coauthor on that paper). If the AMOC weakens, this region will cool. And in fact it is cooling – it’s the only region on Earth which has cooled since preindustrial times. The argument has been made that the ‘cold blob’ might not be caused by an AMOC decline but by heat loss at the ocean surface.

Ocean 242
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Phantastic Job!

Real Climate

Think about what is involved – biological proxies from extinct species, plate tectonic movement, disappearance in subduction zones of vast amounts of ocean sediment, interpolating sparse data in space and time, degradation of samples over such vast amounts of time. All of which adds to the uncertainty.

Sea Level 354
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Deciphering the ‘SPM AR6 WG1’ code

Real Climate

There is no doubt that we have changed Earth’s climate through our activities on a broad range of aspects that includes consequences for the atmosphere, the oceans, snow, ice, Earth’s fauna and ecosystems. In addition, ozone depletion higher up in the stratosphere has caused a cooling high up in the atmosphere. mm increase every year.