A new study has confirmed that the Gulf Stream, a crucial ocean current that helps regulate climate and sea levels, is weakening. The flow of warm water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades. This slowdown has significant implications for the world’s climate, and scientists are concerned that it may be a sign of further weakening to come.
Original scientific work: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023GL105170
It has a plain language summary, nothing as far as dramatic. I definitely didn’t find any actual study predicting a collapse.
Plain Language Summary
The Gulf Stream is a major ocean current located off the East Coast of the United States. It carries a tremendous amount of seawater and along with it heat, carbon, and other ocean constituents. Because of this, the Gulf Stream plays an important role in weather and climate, influencing phenomena as seemingly unrelated as sea level along coastal Florida and temperature and precipitation over continental Europe. Given how important this ocean current is to science and society, scientists have tried to determine whether the Gulf Stream has undergone significant changes under global warming, but so far, they have not reached a firm conclusion. Here we report our effort to synthesize available Gulf Stream observations from the Florida Straits near Miami, and to assess whether and how the Gulf Stream transport there has changed since 1982. We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years, the first conclusive, unambiguous observational evidence that this ocean current has undergone significant change in the recent past. Future studies should try to identify the cause of this change.
The people that need to care- don’t. And the people that DO care, are unable to do enough to change the outcome.
We’re fucked.
Hopefully I’m safe-ish in Québec…
It’s sad to see all these climate tipping points taking hold with humans not even (really) trying to slow them down, forget reversing them.
Continiously bickering over pointless things. With wars taking over unexpectedly one after another (in retrospect, maybe not that unexpected). China just itching for anything to start their own little “special operation” next door. While some other militarized countries/organizations are too trigger happy and in fear of missing out on the action.
We may indeed not make it past the hyperobject that is Climate Change simply because we are too busy blaming inflation, opposing political views, illusions of our own imagination and an unending amount of irrationality. Since it is inconvenient/difficult to try and understand slightly complex concept such as taxation, vaccination, immigration, or even just a map amongst so many things, let alone complex systems feeding into each other such as the Human-Ecology-Climate systems.
Moreover, the prevalence of misinformation doesn’t help.
Nevertheless, let us hope for better times. 🥹
you’re not.
If you’re on earth, you’re not safe from catastrophic climate change unfortunately.
our only hope is a absolutely radical shift towards decarbonisation, however the drive of capitalism and greed is an unstoppable force.
Enjoy normal life while we still have it at this point.
Is this… It?
Global revolt against the few inbred old wealth
I hate to say it, but even if somehow the top 1% or .1% disappeared, we’d probably stay on the same trajectory.
