Due to the nature of science and how any predictions and projections it makes needs to be couched in exceedingly conservative tones, it has become a running gag in climate science that everything will happen “much sooner than expected”. Because invariably, it does. Sometime hundreds of years sooner than expected.
Hell, it was first thought that the AMOC wouldn’t collapse for centuries, and now more accurate projections put it as being sometime between 2025 and 2085, with a “most likely due date” of some time in the early 2050s. And this is still an exceedingly conservative estimate. Who wants to bet that it’ll happen much sooner than even that?
My understanding is we have evidence of slowdown but really don’t have the historical data to know when AMOC stops being driven, and it could take a century or two for the water to actually stop circulating.
Some outrage headlines have claimed it’s already collapsed and I don’t know if we have data to disagree with that
And likely much earlier.
Due to the nature of science and how any predictions and projections it makes needs to be couched in exceedingly conservative tones, it has become a running gag in climate science that everything will happen “much sooner than expected”. Because invariably, it does. Sometime hundreds of years sooner than expected.
Hell, it was first thought that the AMOC wouldn’t collapse for centuries, and now more accurate projections put it as being sometime between 2025 and 2085, with a “most likely due date” of some time in the early 2050s. And this is still an exceedingly conservative estimate. Who wants to bet that it’ll happen much sooner than even that?
2025 is in less than 60 days. Much sooner than that would be like tomorrow.
My last reference was the 2050s “most likely due date”. That is bound to get revised radically towards the present, as more data is collected.
And at the very least, that entire range is going to be compressed towards the present as well.
My understanding is we have evidence of slowdown but really don’t have the historical data to know when AMOC stops being driven, and it could take a century or two for the water to actually stop circulating.
Some outrage headlines have claimed it’s already collapsed and I don’t know if we have data to disagree with that