A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

ryanschneider

HowTown has a pretty good video on the same subject: https://youtu.be/dqLM65HfVEw?is=avWFidbKxRvW3YUY

camgunz

I really think people are sleeping on the AMOC. The first season there isn't European wine/cheese/olives because of climate change is the first season European farmers probably literally declare war on their governments, to say nothing of the fact that almost no European homes can handle this level of cold. And for some perspective, this is only one of many other huge changes that huge populations will react violently to in the next 20-50 years. Good luck to us all.

deadbabe

Could we put underwater data centers there to reheat the waters?

AndrewKemendo

This world, despite a century of warning, is truly not ready to pay the debt of industrialization

skeledrew

Meh who cares? Let it all burn and flood. Earth gets a fresh start, and hopefully whatever "intelligent" species evolves to be dominant in the next 5-10 million years is a better custodian. Rinse and repeat until that's the case. Heck, who knows if this is actually the 1st or 100th iteration...

hliyan

I recently finished rewatching The Three Body Problem in which (spoilers follow) the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years. If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real. Granted I was a climate change skeptic myself until about 10 years ago, but right now the data seems indisputable. Even if we can't find a direct causal relationship between CO2 emissions and warming, we know the following very accurately (disclaimer: not a climate scientist): (1) amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere per year (2) concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (3) amount of extra energy that would be theoretically retained in the atmosphere via the green house effect, due to a given increment in CO2 concentration, (4) global temperatures within the past, say 30 years. Don't we know for a fact that (1) + (2) + (3) is very well correlated with (4), and that no other potential causes correlate as well with (4), and don't current computational models demonstrate an ability to predict (4) given (3). So, exactly what is the source of skepticism?

jdw64

The sad thing about humans is that under capitalism, capital consumes public goods like nature. Then, when those public goods degrade and harm the human species, the capital class that actively consumed those public goods refuses to help restore them and instead cries that it's all a lie

NDlurker

Put a massive underwater data center there. Free cooling for the computers. Free heating for Europe. Everyone wins.

clort

Well its funny. I remember reading years ago that the big problems in Europe would start when the Greenland glaciers started melting, adding significant cold water to the Labrador Current, and pushing the AMOC to the south. Never mind the sea level rise, the temperature in Europe would drop significantly. Now, looking at the image in the article, there is a massive cold blob right there where the Labrador Current joins the Atlantic, but no mention of the theories that I've read about years ago, just that it is mysterious

snovv_crash

Europe might have a hiccup until warming becomes more widespread and it goes back to 'normal'. The question is how long until Texas and Florida become uninhabitable because the heat isn't being shunted out to Europe, on top of the additional heat from global warming.

metalman

Any talk of the various climactic theorys is very³ very³ likely to be wrong³.These systems are huge, interconected, and NOT UNDERSTOOD. What we do have is some data that strongly suggests that the climate is changing, possibly at an unprecidented rate.Right now. Record territory in fact. https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.cf.g... https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice_daily/?nhsh=nh https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today

iJohnDoe

If we take the down the signs then everything will be okay. https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/13/politics/judge-ruling-nationa... > At South Carolina’s Fort Sumter National Monument, a sign that included details on the looming impacts of climate change, including information on how “rising seas could inundate most of the fort’s walls and flood the historic parade ground” was removed in its entirety.

Kon5ole

I don't know if it's too late to stop the worst case scenarios of global warming yet or if there's still time, but it doesn't seem to be happening anyway. The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts. However, I do think we have time to prepare for the worst case scenarios, and individual countries and states can do that efficiently on their own. Improve evacuation routines in floodable areas, build greenhouses to deal with cold snaps, ensure there are air conditioned buildings to deal with heatwaves, have distributed local production of electricity, keep strategic food reserves stocked, and so on. Edit: Not saying that such efforts are the solution by any means, but they will help.

Metacelsus

Hmm, Science just had a news article saying the AMOC was doing OK: https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-current-warms-...

ramon156

Has anyone seen the news in India (that the Indian media for some reason is not covering) It was 48 C this week in some cities. The power grid was not ready for the amount of AC power needed, and it turned into blackouts. You're sitting in a dark cube that has been cooking for 12 hours, hoping something might happen. A healthy 25 year old would die in 6 hours. Even if you do not want to accept climate change is a thing, you can accept the current state of the world is affecting people.

chicken-stew

Is this why the US has been cutting ties with Europe?

krupan

Eh, let's just build more natural gas powered data centers. Maybe an LLM will tell us how to solve problems like this I'm joking, but apparently there are influential people who really believe it's a good idea (see: governor or Utah and his statements on AI data centers recently)

Yizahi

I'm interested in AMOC and other aspects of the problem, and this recent video by RealLifeLore was very informative for me, unlike other;s like this OP article and the like. I definitely recommend it if previously you saw only two extreme points of view about AMOC. Basically the current is weakening, yes, but it's shutdown will happen neither soon nor unexpected. In fact there are several ocean wide monitoring stations which don't rely on a guess work that much and there is a clear data trend about AMOC power and shutdown requirements. If you really want to save time on watching the video, stations began monitoring in 2004 and in 20 years since the AMOC current calculated "bandwidth" dropped from 18 points to 16 points and physicists estimate that the drop is about 1 point per decade, and that AMOC will begin shutdown phase only after dropping to 6 points or less. In about 100 years if the trend holds. Even assuming gigantic errors or extreme climate change acceleration , it still won't decrease 100 year time by x10-x20 times less to make it happen in one decade. So in short, it's all bad and the trend is always bad to worse, just like the real emissions (unlike estimated PR "emissions" which are usually discussed by politicians). But AMOC specifically almost certainly won't stop in our lifetime. Our kids, though, won't be as lucky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkYWW95eSLs

lmaoguy

Quick pay more taxes! That will stop it!

m463

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...