Does anybody know if such a collapse would happen instantaneous or more gradual? With the massive amount of water in motion it feels like it would take a long time to stop, or are fluids behaving differently?
Actually no. There is a much faster state than what we’re in now, but there is a lot of variability in the flow states. Since we’re approaching the point of a collapse, we’re solidly in the slow state, but not yet at the slowest point. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0007-4
But which are the stable states? I was under the impression if a wizard made climate change stop now it would go back to the fast state, since we probably haven’t hit the tipping point yet.
I don’t think there really is a “stable” state that we can point to, just because it is always changing based on the climate conditions, and we have very imperfect data for talking about what it was like even a century ago. I’m also not certain that we haven’t hit a tipping point, from what I’ve read we’ve started to enter positive feedback loops climate wise, so the Earth would keep warming a bit and then stabilize to a warmer-than-it-should-be level even if we stopped polluting now. That would definitely continue to impact the currents.
Oh, okay. There’s other climate systems where it’s thought at least that we can point to distinct stable states. The Wikipedia article on tipping points has some examples.
