General UK Climate News and Stories

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An Atlantic Ocean current system that keeps the UK temperate (Ireland too) rather than 'like Northern Norway', is said to be possibly at risk of no longer doing its thing. It's a 'serious possibility' within decades according to a group of scientists:

Climate scientists warn Nordic ministers of changing Atlantic Ocean current
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The utterly plausible case that climate change makes London much colder
FT. January 11 2025 https://archive.ph/H4izp

To predict the future, at least in any meaningful way, requires both science and imagination. For decades, the scientific advice has been that the world should brace for a warmer climate. By 2050, according to one study, London’s summers will resemble those of Barcelona. Already temperatures of 40C have led to the installation of air conditioning and water fountains. But for a growing group of scientists, another scenario is becoming increasingly plausible.

One day, possibly in our lifetimes, the temperature could start to drop in northern Europe. When this is forecast in isolation, without the offsetting warming effects of climate change, London would end up as much as 10C colder. Once climate change is taken into account, the scenario is for London’s average temperature to rise and then gradually fall, ending up perhaps 2-3C cooler than before industrial times. Such a shift may not sound dramatic. But the storms, wildfires and heatwaves of recent years have taken place on an average temperature shift of just over 1C. As averages move, the extremes become more extreme.

What’s more, recently published modelling estimates that the cooling could start in the next couple of decades, although it would take perhaps a century to play out in full.

One of the most alarming — and uncertain — fields of climate research, the explanation lies in the oceans. Today, currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) bring vast amounts of water from the tropics to the northern regions. The Amoc is a conveyor belt or perhaps a central heating system. The warmth that it transfers from south to north is about 50 times all the energy that humans use.

In places, the Amoc forms part of the Gulf Stream. It represents about one-fifth of the water that the Gulf Stream transports, but most of the heat. It keeps London several degrees warmer than places at similar latitudes, for example on the Pacific coast of Canada. In recent decades, however, those currents have been weakening. A point may come when they no longer circulate. They may pass a tipping point, beyond which there is no return.

A full collapse of the Amoc would be a “massive, planetary-scale disaster”, says Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute and one of the world’s leading experts on the system. “It is quite difficult to know exactly what the impacts will be, but my feeling is that they will be quite devastating.”