March 30, 2021–Climate change is threatening our circulation. We must act now. (Washington Post) – Southwest Organization for Sustainability

The world’s climate depends on a global aquatic “conveyor belt” system that snakes around the oceans, taking heat from some places and redistributing it elsewhere. It is this system that keeps Europe relatively warm despite its northern latitudes, underpins major fisheries and drives key weather patterns across continents. Global warming may be endangering this crucial circulation. Scientists are accumulating evidence that climate change is disrupting a major section of the conveyor belt, running from the tropics up to the North Atlantic and back south, slowing this piece of the system to its weakest pace in more than 1,000 years, according to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. By changing the atmosphere’s chemistry at a breakneck pace, humanity is conducting a massive, unprecedented experiment on finely tuned planetary systems, with consequences that range from predictable to speculative, and what experts know about Earth history offers little comfort for what awaits.

A group of scientists from Britain, Germany and Ireland studying the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — that is, the circulation pattern that warms the North Atlantic — have sought to compare how it is behaving now with its recent past. Experts only began directly measuring the pattern in 2004, so they looked for clues in seafloor sediments and ocean temperature patterns, which suggested how the currents behaved before. The clues present a consistent picture: The circulation has weakened in a way that is unprecedented in the past 1,000 years, said Niamh Cahill, a statistician from Ireland’s Maynooth University. To view the full article visit the Washington Post.