Amoc collapse could change Europe’s climate 10x faster than expected. We aren’t ready
Imagine we detect a large asteroid heading straight for Earth. We are able to intervene and prevent disaster, but instead we cut the funding needed to track it. A few million dollars, it was argued, was too expensive to have a chance to save society.
While this scenario isn’t real, the metaphor is alarmingly accurate. In Europe, we spend €1bn to monitor space for asteroids, even if the actual risk of a civilisation-ending asteroid strike is close to zero.
But governments don’t commit to spend a fraction of that amount to adequately monitor a threat that is more imminent, more likely, and located here on Earth: a major change in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc).
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Under current climate change, the Amoc is projected to weaken enough to radically change the weather and cause sea level rise in Europe. However, there is little consensus on when and how fast this will occur. Projections of the future Amoc vary between climate models, and while scientists continue to improve the ability of models to represent the real ocean, progress is hampered by insufficient understanding of the physics of the Amoc.
Consequently, this complicates matters for policymakers to implement adaptive strategies to reduce financial loss and impact on human lives. It is even more astonishing, then, that today’s minimal monitoring of the Amoc, our best hope of understanding what lies ahead, is now under acute threat of being discontinued. This will leave us unaware, unprotected and unprepared.
Worse, there is potential for Amoc weakening to become a collapse. In that specific scenario ,Europe would experience climate change up to 10 times faster than today. Considering that current climate change is already hard to keep up with as a society, we can’t begin to imagine what impact an Amoc collapse could have on our daily lives.
