General UK Climate News and Stories

[yield]

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
link

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.”

 

[two sheds]

or ....

New study finds that critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) helps to regulate the Earth’s climate and weather

www.whoi.edu

Woods Hole, Mass. (January 15, 2025) — Earth, being 71 percent covered in water, is influenced by the ocean and its movements. In the Atlantic Ocean, a system of connected currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), moves water throughout the world’s oceans powered by a combination of winds and ocean density. It not only distributes the ocean’s heat, moisture, and nutrients, but regulates the Earth’s climate and weather.


As the climate is continuously changing and the atmosphere is warming, many scientists fear that fresh water from melting polar ice sheets could significantly disrupt—or collapse—the AMOC. While a decline of the AMOC would have grave consequences, a collapse would be truly catastrophic. However, studies about the AMOC’s long term future are uncertain. Instead of predicting the future, a team of scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) quantified the past to help inform where we could be going.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists found that the AMOC has not declined in the last 60 years. Authors Nicholas P. Foukal, adjunct scientist in Physical Oceanography at WHOI and assistant professor at the University of Georgia; Jens Terhaar, affiliated scientist at WHOI and senior scientist at the University of Bern; and Linus Vogt, visiting student at WHOI when he started to work on this study and now scientist at LOCEAN, Sorbonne Université, say their results mean that the AMOC is currently more stable than expected.

“Our paper says that the Atlantic overturning has not declined yet,” Foukal said, who conducted the research while at WHOI. “That doesn’t say anything about its future, but it doesn’t appear the anticipated changes have occurred yet.”

:hopeful smiley:

And, since I should really comment on this, I think it's good that we may not suddenly get Moscow's climate

 

[Elpenor]

I’ve noticed an increase in anti net zero graffiti locally (south Devon - fairly near to Totnes and a fairly strong Reform vote).

The graffiti is sprayed onto highways road signs on dual carriageways and other fast flowing roads so I can’t stop and photograph but the ones I’ve seen are

“NET ZERO POVERTY
NET ZERO SLAVERY
NET ZERO SUICIDE”

And

“NET ZERO SCAM
NET ZERO LIES
NET ZERO FRAUD”

So quite emotive; and of course the slavery reference is particularly offensive.

I am going to work out how to report the one I saw today (the first one). It’s a bit complicated as I can’t remember exactly where it was on the road, and I tend to drive that particular road in the dark!

Anyway I’m not sure if anti net zero types need a specific thread or if there is one already - this probably will not be the right one but hopefully it proves a good starting point if one is needed. I don’t know if this is even the right forum?

 

[Humberto]

Hastening their own deaths and those of their children's children to serve billionaires.

 

[Signal 11]

or ....

New study finds that critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) helps to regulate the Earth’s climate and weather

www.whoi.edu

:hopeful smiley:

And, since I should really comment on this, I think it's good that we may not suddenly get Moscow's climate

The difference is more about whether the change has been reliably detected yet, not whether it's expected. There's an article on this at realclimate.

As is often the case with such media whiplash, there isn’t much scientific substance behind it, except for the usual small incremental steps in the search for improved understanding. It is rare that one single paper overthrows our thinking, though media reports unfortunately often give that impression. Real science is more like a huge jigsaw puzzle, where each new piece adds a little bit.

I do not believe that the new attempt to reconstruct the AMOC is more reliable than earlier methods based on temperature or salinity patterns, on density changes in the ‘cold blob’ region, or on various paleoclimatic proxy data, which have concluded there is a weakening. But since we don’t have direct current measurements going far enough back in time, some uncertainty about that remains. The new study however does not change my assessment of AMOC weakening in any way.

all agree that the AMOC will weaken in response to global warming in future and that this poses a serious risk, whether this weakening has already emerged from natural variability in the limited observational data we have, or not.

edit: don't know what happened to my link but it works if you click. edit2: looks ok again after refreshing.