Europe Faces Faster Climate Shift If Amoc Collapse Happens

Europe could face an amoc collapse that drives climate change up to 10 times faster than today. Penny Holliday, Femke de Jong and Sjoerd Groeskamp warn that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, one of the world's major ocean current systems, is already under strain and that the monitoring needed to track it is now at acute risk.

The circulation moves heat from the south to north in the Atlantic Ocean and plays a crucial role in regulating global climate. The authors say modern civilisation is built on that climate regulation, and they point to the gap between the €1bn governments spend to monitor space for asteroids and the far smaller commitment to the Amoc.

Penny Holliday on Amoc monitoring

Systematic monitoring began only two decades ago, when a handful of researchers patched together nationally funded projects. Today, that work is minimal and under acute threat of being discontinued, leaving many newer studies to rely on approximations of Amoc strength because of the lack of past direct measurements.

That shortage of data has kept the debate over Amoc change open. There is little consensus on when weakening will happen or how fast it will unfold, and the uncertainty runs through every estimate of what a weaker circulation could do to Europe.

Europe and the Amoc collapse risk

Under current climate change, the Amoc is projected to weaken enough to radically change the weather and cause sea level rise in Europe. The article says those shifts could reach food security, coastal flooding, storms, energy demand, migration and infrastructure planning.

If an amoc collapse occurs, Europe would not be dealing with a gradual adjustment but with a climate shift moving up to 10 times faster than today. The next step is whether governments keep the monitoring in place long enough to measure changes before those projections have to be tested in practice.