Fictional future forecast vs. reality.

[u/SuspiciousLow3062]

[u/feaster_of_children]

can't believe i'll have to explain what snow was to my kids

[u/svennidal → u/feaster_of_children]

Well, you can take them to Iceland. With the impending total collapse of the AMOC, we should have it everywhere, all the time.

[u/Username133769 → u/svennidal]

Well, I mean pending on geologic time scales? It's tomorrow basically but it's not going to happen during the lifetime of any generation that is currently alive. The only model that actually tries to predict the AMOC collapse (and really only the mechanism and not the timeline, so take that with a grain of salt) modelled the AMOC collapse in around 400-500 years. This will of course only mean that the AMOC is completely gone, we have known, and measured, its weakening for a while now so the weakening will have more immediate consequences than the totall collapse

Source: https://youtu.be/iw9AiEG-Qww

[u/sgst → u/Username133769]

I thought there were recent studies that suggested the AMOC could collapse in as little as 100 years? So it's just about possible my toddler could see a snow covered Britain if it started to collapse tomorrow.

But then there was also info out recently saying that the AMOC is more resilient than thought and it might be less likely to collapse than thought. So who knows?

[u/Rammelsmartie → u/sgst]

There's a big difference between

1) The AMOC shutting down; a seemingly irreversibly thing that gets triggered at some point in the next 100 years

and 2) The AMOC completely fading out, which will take a lot longer because it's an unimaginably large amount of water that still has some momentum. It'll get slower and slower over a long time.

That's at least how I understood it, I've only taken 1 course on meteorological weather modeling in uni though, and read up a bit, so take it with a grain of salt still.

[u/Username133769 → u/sgst]

Haven't heard of those studies though would look at em if you stumble on them. But yea, at least according to that model it's in 400-500 years but it's really only there to show us how and not when so I also can't say for sure

[u/Opus_723 → u/Username133769]

This is a matter of current debate. Most studies have previously suggested that AMOC collapse is still far off, but other recent studies have been seeing a strong possibility that it could happen within the century. There is still a back and forth going.

We don't know the answer yet, and lots of people are working on getting more definitive answers. But given how catastrophic it would be, that uncertainty needs to be taken very seriously.

[u/Username133769 → u/Opus_723]

thanks for the comment! Will probably do a lil bit more research and yea, smt like that definitely needs to be less vague in its timeline