this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Gloomy climate calculation: Scientists predict a collapse of the Atlantic ocean current to happen mid-century (www.sciencedaily.com)
submitted 11 months ago by YoTcA@feddit.de to c/science@beehaw.org
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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?

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[–] alcyoneous@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] alcyoneous@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

Ah cool, I’ll have to check that one out. I love a Wikipedia rabbit-hole but haven’t come across that one yet.