A team of scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical ocean current, has not declined in the last 60 years. The study, published in Nature Communications, used new data and analysis to quantify the past and inform where we could be going.
The AMOC plays a vital role in distributing heat, moisture, and nutrients throughout the world’s oceans, regulating the Earth’s climate and weather. As the climate continues to change and the atmosphere warms, scientists fear that freshwater from melting polar ice sheets could disrupt or collapse the AMOC. However, this study suggests that the AMOC is currently more stable than expected.
The researchers used data from climate models and reanalysis products to analyze air-sea heat fluxes in the North Atlantic. They found that the decadal averaged AMOC has not weakened from 1963 to 2017, indicating a lack of decline over the past six decades.
While previous studies suggested that the AMOC had declined by about 70 years ago, this study’s findings contradict those results. The researchers acknowledge that their analysis is based on proxy data and contains some uncertainty, but they conclude that a decline in the AMOC over the last 60 years seems unlikely.
This study’s results are significant because they suggest that there may still be time to act before reaching the potential tipping point of the AMOC’s collapse. The authors emphasize that further research is needed to understand the long-term future of the Atlantic overturning.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-01-critical-ocean-current-declined-years.html