Check out Sharks Unknown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS2FdIcqlqg
With unprecedented heat waves and record-breaking global temperatures, it’s hard to believe that there might be a place on earth that has actually COOLED since the industrial revolution. But, it turns out, there is such a spot. The COLD BLOB off of Greenland mystified scientists for years, but new studies have uncovered a scary reality – this cool patch might be a warning of the impending collapse of a vital earth circulation system. And the consequences would be dire.
In this episode of Weathered, we travel to the Gulf Stream with the new PBS Terra show Sharks Unknown to experience the AMOC first hand. And we ask, what is the likelihood that the AMOC will collapse, and what would the consequences be?
Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.
This episode of Weathered is licensed exclusively to YouTube.
Subscribe to PBS Terra so you never miss an episode! https://bit.ly/3mOfd77
And keep up with Weathered and PBS Terra on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PBSDigitalSt…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pbsds
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pbsds
Sources:
Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen. “Warming of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation”. Nature Communications. 2023.
L. Caesar et al. “Current Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation weakest in last millennium.” Nature Geoscience. 2021
Chengfei He et al. “A North Atlantic Warming Hole Without Ocean Circulation.” Geophysical Research Letters. 2022.
Stefan Rahmstorf et al. “Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation.” Nature Climate Change. 2015.
Paul Keil et al. “Multiple drivers of the North Atlantic warming hole”. Nature. 2020.
David Armstrong Mckay et al. “Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points”. Science. 2022
source
44 comments
Stupid Claims and Lack of responsible accusations.. No one can show us the dividing line between Human caused warming and natural caused warming. If you don't know where it is how in hell can you make that claim. The law in many places says the if your blood alcohol level is above .08 you are inibreated. That clearly says .08% blood alcohol is the dividing line beyween sober and intoxicated.
Apperantly, no scientist no enginere, no geologist, no meteoroligist can tell us where that line is. In which case can you make the argument it's "HUMAN CAUSED". When we know without a doubt there was an ice age some time ago covering much of North America where did it. That ice left before we had oil cars trucks and airplanes. As such, it makes the claim "HUMAN CAUSED" nothing more than a wild guess.
This is dumb.. the disruption of flow of warmer water into colder areas is going to have a stabilisating effect..
science communicator is job title now. the world has gone mad.
Well well well, Al Gore was perhaps right?
more of the Chicken Little syndrome…..hand me the Hockey Stick
Climate change is bullshit. Ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica and many other climate proxies prove the Earth was actually warmer than it is today for most of the past 10,000 years. From 7,000 to 4,000 years ago the average temperature of the Earth was about 3 degrees C warmer than today and stayed relatively warmer than the modern world until the 12th century B.C. when temperatures began to fall. As temperatures dropped evaporation from the oceans decreased causing persistent and wide ranging droughts which led to the Late Bronze Age collapse.
The climate began to improve again at approximately 200 BC, ushering in the Roman Warm Period when global temperatures were at least 2 degrees C warmer than today. When temperatures fell again in the mid 5th century crops failed and the population, weakened by famine, was decimated by the Justinian plague. Humanity suffered in the cold during these dark ages until temperatures finally warmed again at the beginning of the 10th century.
From 900 CE to 1300 CE the mediaeval warm period saw global temperatures rise again to an average of at least 1 to 2 degrees C warmer than today. This was a time of abundance with mild winters, longer growing seasons, increased food production and generally pleasant reliable weather. During this period of warmth the Vikings were able to settle Greenland and explore the Northern coasts of North America. This Viking expansion would have been impossible in our modern colder climate because it's too cold today to grow the same crops the Greenland Viking settlers were successfully cultivating from the 10th to the 13th centuries. At around 1300 CE average Global temperatures dropped again to about 2°C colder than today. This Little Ice Age period caused the demise of the Vikings in Greenland.
Before 1200 CE the winter sea ice had never reached Iceland. At the beginning of the 13th century the southern limit of sea ice began expanding far enough South to reach the island. By the mid 13th century sea ice was surrounded Iceland for an average of eight weeks each winter. Throughout the Little Ice Age Iceland was surrounded by ice for longer and longer periods each year. By the 19th century Iceland was almost permanently locked in sea ice, with only a couple of months each summer when the ice would melt enough for ships to travel between Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia.
During the Little Ice Age mountain glaciers expanded throughout North and South America, Asia, New Zealand, and Europe, consuming many mountain villages and drastically reducing the area of arable land. Frequent cold winters and cool, wet summers led to crop failures and famines over much of northern and central Europe. In addition, the North Atlantic cod fisheries declined as ocean temperatures fell in the 17th century. In North America between 1250 and 1500, the Native American cultures of the upper Mississippi valley and the western prairies began a general decline as drier conditions set in, accompanied by a transfer from agriculture to hunting. Over the same period in Japan, glaciers advanced, the mean winter temperature dropped 3.5 °C (6.3 °F), and summers were marked by excessive rains and bad harvests.
The climate crisis myth is based on many inaccuracies in historical climate data, failed climate models, and totally ignores solar variability along with the effects of clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate, as well as many other factors that could mitigate human impact on world climate. The pessimistic, and ever increasingly alarmist, global warming scenarios depicted in the media has little to no real scientific basis. In fact many aspects of increased CO2 levels and the mild warming it may induce, such as the CO2 fertilization effect on plants longer growing seasons, a reduced need to burn fuels for heating, would have a highly positive impact on the human race. Many proposed “solutions” to the global warming “crisis” (like “carbon” taxes) would have severe consequences for economically disadvantaged groups and nations.
I read the Bible, and despite you may believe it or not, It says something really true about human nature, man doesn't changes unless he suffers. We can get in many discussions, but that is a truth that repeated many times along history. We may be the ones who may be witness of the end, not kidding. I was studiying for being ecologist, and nature does something called "Ecological doom loops", where all systems collapse together, and they acelerate each others processes. Our pride brought us here. We should be ready.
Plant a tree. Even if it burns down it will have absorbed more carbon than it will release in combustion. Tree magic.
A look at the Greenland ice core data will tell anyone that since the Younger-Dryas event temperatures have been much warmer than they are today and that temperatures have actually cooled several degrees over the last 3,000 years .
I remember first reading about the amoc and its collapse. Some say warming will continue. Some say it will spark a prolonged cooling. But both sides had said we don't know. There are events in the past that occurred naturally that did both. In the end we don't know. Where I'm at and from what I've read I agree with the scientists that say we're headed for a significant cooling event. Which in the long run will be far more damaging to us than warming. Growing seasons will shorten. They will move south causing less land to be available for farming due to the geology of appropriate land. But what scares me most is the irrational passion around the subject. In the end we don't know what is going to happen. And not discussing the opposing views on the long term effects is dangerous.
I live in the capital of Iceland and we are already experiencing colder temperatures in the summer because of the fresh water from the glacier melting in Greenland not being able to mix with the ocean.
Even though it can be frustrating when it rarely gets over 15°c we're grateful because we're not dealing with the increasingly higher temperatures the rest of the world has been experiencing.
Now not only are we a popular destination for 'clean air tourism' which is when people from China and other countries with very high pollution come here for a week or two to get clean air into their lungs.
Now people are coming here to cool down.
I'm wondering what will happen in Iceland if the gulf stream won't reach that far north anymore?
Wait a minute , you meen earth has its own way of fighting the warming ? Who would have thunk it…
Hey Guys! I love the show and was very informative. I believe we can solve these issues! I know it seems duanting but one must accept these challenges as a just another lesson about being human. https://youtu.be/vtY9Br-GrVs?si=MKbJF5USOQJcAuuF
Chicken Little has entered the chat . . .
Soooo the oceans are cooling because of global warming… got it! 🙄
Thank you for the excellent explanation of the conveyor system. I had no idea how imminent a concern this could be! 😮
These guys must be pulling their hair out with the iceland volcano dumping huge amounts of pollution
This is the scariest thing coming. Around 11,000 BCE an ice dam broke and flooded the Mackinsey River in Canada with a Black Sea-sized lake of Laurentide glacial melt. The Mackensie carrlied that north into the Arctic and then ocean currents took it down past Baffin Island into the Labrador Sea, disrupting the AMOC. This started the Lesser Dryas, many centuries of ice age, a reverse-course when the world was warming.
There is never a background on the data. I have never heard about scientists traveling the globe in the 1800's collecting ocean temperatures. Where did this data could from?
We better start educating our young more than worrying about color, the more new ideas the best chance to come up with solutions. And start forcing countries like india and China to get serious about cutting there pollution rates.
As the oceans waters warm up there will no longer be enough cold and warm water to even have a heat transfer system in our oceans because there will no longer be enough cold water to have one! With warm water throughout our oceans our weather patterns will change so that all the water in the oceans will just stay in place and slowly move around the planet from the Earth's movements and wind movements. that will lead to disastrous conditions of no more winters and warm weather all over Earth because there will be no more cold air from the oceans and by then all the ice and snow will have melted on Earth. Either stop global warming now by stopping to fly jet engine airplanes and go back to only flying propeller airplanes and stop flying all space and military rockets or Earth's atmosphere will heat up like Mars and Venus atmosphere's and end the possibility of any life of any kind to exist on Earth!
What ever we human do on earth is nothing to what the sun does to earth.
The fact that you had to bring up the last ice age as a measure of "what it might look like," betrays the fact that it is a natural and cyclical phenomenon driven by the sun, NOT BY HUMAN ACTIVITY. It was not humans who caused the end of the last ice age, but we lived through it all the same: because hymans can adapt to most environmental conditions on this planet. We ca adapt, and will adapt…so just shut up about all your fear mongering, and stop trying to shame us for using cheap energy. You should be petitioning the secrete government agencies that are sitting on advanced technologies that could replace fossil fules without putting everyone into poverty. Just Stop Stupidness.
it's already happening. today it's 24/12/2023, Alps, 600mt of altitude, 16 centigrades at night, no ski, no snow, no freeriding, it's over
Records have only been kept since 1979? Thats not all that alarming. That seems like a little narrative is at work and people should look closely at the science. We live through an ice age termination and we sre not speeding it up that rapidly. We are mitigating but it wont be enough, volcanism will star going off without the glaciers warming further. Humanity has survived much warmer.
Fake News 😂
And yet we still can't get corporations and governments to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels.
No
PBS is government propaganda. Why did they only go back to 1979 to show the earth is getting warmer. When dinosaurs roamed the earth CO2 was 16 times higher than it is today with higher temperatures than today. This climate change nonsense is a scam and science proves it
Is the real problem WHAT we are doing or HOW MANY of us are doing it on a global scale?
By the way: PBS means PURE BULL SH*T, as in propaganda, lies and nonsense with no factual basis.
Of course you don't mention the fact that the Earth's core is heating up, causing warming and expansion of the land and the seas.
Mother Earth is in charge, always and eternally.
What about the relationship of the Poll Migration?
So glad there were people taking climate notes for the last 800k years. Lmao
Soooooo….. is this where we're supposed to believe the 'human impact' on the AMOC ? lol More natural cycles, doing natural things, naturally…. the same as before humans, and the same after we're all gone. Nature is awesome, what's less awesome is the human capacity for self-centeredness and believing that they are affecting million year old geologic processes. If we'd all just drive electric cars, those pesky plate tectonics would be so mean… hiLARRYous !!
Can't help thinking that we are pretty much screwed, the only thing which might help would be planet-wide cooperation to help mitigate some of the seemingly ineviitable environmental crises which are, most assuredly heading our way. Tragically though, that is less likely now that ever as there is increasing polarisation and politicisation of such concerns and, unfortunately, the vast majority of the world's population is either too wrapped up in the trivia which bombards us from every direction or just overwhelmed by the enormity and range of the problems which face us.
Probaly the worst possible time in the history of Homo Sapiens to bring children into the world so, if you are thinking about getting married and starting a family, think again.
We crossed the "tipping point" in the 1980s i think as it occurs when a critical threshold of emissions reached a point..not when the effects became aparent
Solar flares.
This winter 2023-2024 we have had cold air stuck over Scandinavia several times, bringing temperatures way below normal. We have had several negative temperature records. Today it was minus 42 C in the north of Sweden. Could this be because of the weakening Gulf Stream? 😮
Climate communicator??? The science is already confusing enough, now we have to throw meaningless titles into the conversation too. This is why global warming failed. The message and the messengers were activists masking the actual information.
I just drink more Beer…
"warm and complete the circulation" at 4:10 is incorrect, not that it matters for the Social-Journalist-Public-Joe-Bloe stuff since it's a loop anyway. The circulation starts in the Greenland Sea where deep convective chimneys pump water to the south (note 1) and that's what drives it so that's the AMOC and that's it's start & end, not starting & ending just north of Antarctica where the ignorant video lady said it starts & ends. Note 1: The AMOC flow is 15-17 Sv but only 8 Sv leaves the Greenland Sea through the 3 valleys which are 1,000 m deep so the other 7-9 Sv of flow must get added just south of the Greenland-Scotland ridge where the NADW descends from 1,000 m (meaning like 200-1,000 m) down to 3,500 m (meaning like 800-3,500 m roughly or some such, find a WOCE GO-SHIP standard A16 salinity section to check the details yourself you lazy bunch). I've never come across what part of the pressure push for the extra 7-9 Sv of flow is new push just south of the Greenland-Scotland ridge (so it would still exist even if the Greenland Sea chimneys stopped) and what part is simply "entraining" more water due to the pressure out of the Greenland Sea having extra push available that could be used after it broke out through the valleys into the deep ocean.
So my family is going to die soon?
If we keep ignoring the 2 elephants in the room, China and India we are wasting our time.
Comments are closed.