Here is a troubling theory about why climate change seemed "suspended" for 15 years



[ad_1]

In the 2004 disaster movie "The day after tomorrow", the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has a paradoxical effect: Rather than warming the planet, they trigger a sudden glaciation . The movie was very stupid and unscientific, but there was a core of truth at the heart of it: The Earth really has a massive, hidden air conditioning system that paradoxically and unexpectedly disturbs the climate and is, in turn, , affected by climate change. And a new paper is turning to this AC unit to eventually address one of the persistent mysteries of climate change: Why does warming seem to "pause" between the mid-1990s and the beginning? of the 2000s.

Atlantic Rollover Meridian Circulation (AMOC). It is a looped current that carries warm water over the sea surface to the North Atlantic and carries colder (more dense) waters southward along the coast. a deeper underwater route. This is the most important reason why much of Europe – a region much further north than most population centers in North America or Asia – is hot enough to be comfortably inhabited. and generally moderates temperatures in the North Atlantic region. For a long time, the fate of AMOC could be important for the global destiny of a world subject to rapid climate change. [Photos: Notoriously Dangerous Ocean Reef Holds Shipwreck Secrets]

But in the past, as already reported in Live Science, the most common versions of this scenario looked a lot like the scraps of science that ended up in the plot of "The Day After Tomorrow "(albeit, infinitely less bananas): Fresh water from melting glaciers enters the Atlantic and moves this warm, salty water flowing northward as part of the Atlantic Ocean. ; AMOC. The cycle slows or collapses, and its warming effect on northern latitudes weakens or disappears. Europe and North America are cooling and experiencing harsher and more extreme winters – perhaps to the point of a new ice age.

This closely matches the findings of paleoclimatology: During the faraway periods when AMOC was weaker, these regions

The new journal, published July 18 in the journal Nature, argues that things might not not work like this in a world like ours, warming quickly thanks to the extreme peak in greenhouse gases. The new study follows earlier research published in 2014 by the same authors that Live Science was covering at the time.

The researchers analyzed the behavior of AMOC in recent decades, and they compared this behavior with climate change trends over the same period. Scientists have found that AMOC was slower and lower between 1975 and 1998 than it was in the next 15 years. And the world has not cooled between 1975 and 1998; rather, it was when the first signs of significant global warming became evident.

In 2004, however, AMOC had significantly strengthened, coinciding with the supposed "break" in climate change that began in 1998 – when our planet increased. surface temperature slowed down. AMOC has since retreated in strength, and over the past decade, the world has experienced nine of the hottest ten years ever recorded.

The authors may suggest that the world is warming up quickly as usual. Instead of serving primarily to warm northern latitudes, it could cool the global surface of the planet by trapping heat from mid-latitudes in the deep waters of the north. When AMOC is strong (as was the case during the "hiatus" of supposed global warming), it attracts more heat to the north. This could help to temporarily delay the effects of climate change.

When AMOC weakens, however, this balance may collapse, causing global temperatures to rise. And, the researchers point out, AMOC experts predict that it will continue to weaken in the coming decades.

This research should not be considered as a definitive prediction of the future of the planet, or of AMOC. The idea of ​​a break in climate change is itself controversial. But this new article represents a decisive step forward in the effort to explain some strange behaviors in the climate over the last few decades. "DOMContentLoaded", function () {if (document.getElementById ("comments")) {var listener = function () {var rect = document.getElementById ("comments"). GetBoundingClientRect (); if (rect.top <window .innerHeight) {loadAPI (); window.removeEventListener ("scroll", listener)}}; window.addEventListener ("scroll", listener)}}); function loadAPI () {var js = document.createElement ("script") js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=131734303545872&version=v2.4"; document.body.appendChild (js)}
var Purch = Purch || {}; Purch.queue = Purch.queue || []; Purch.queue.push ([[“jquery”,”Purch/UI/Poll”] function ($, Poll) {$ ("[data-poll]"). Each (function () {var e = this; var oconf = $ (this) .data ("poll") ? $ (this) .data ("poll"): {}; oconf [“element”] = e; var poll = new Poll (oconf)}}}]);
[ad_2]
Source link