Scientists: Gulf Stream system may disappear as early as 2025

Results of the new research, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that the current system in the Atlantic Ocean may disappear in the near future.

We are talking about the Atlantic meridional circulation (AMOC) - part of the global circulation of water, which helps to redistribute heat and shape the climate on the planet. The most famous part of the AMOC is the Gulf Stream, a current that carries warm water from the Caribbean Sea to the north.

The Gulf Stream has been slowing down since the middle of the 20th century, and calculations show that the rate of slowdown is higher than natural - that is, people are to blame for what is happening. It could come to a complete halt between 2025 and 2095, with the most likely average being 2050, assuming humans fail to reduce carbon emissions.

If the flow were to disappear completely, the tropics would no longer have the monsoon rainy season needed for human, animal and plant life, and dangerously harsh winters would set in across Europe and North America. This will affect the survival of entire ecosystems and food production.

The AMOC has previously stopped and restarted several times during the cycle of ice ages that occurred between 115,000 and 12,000 years ago. During previous system collapses, temperature changes have been as high as 10°C for decades. But this is data from the time of the ice ages, so it is difficult to calculate the correspondence with modern conditions.

Since scientists began to study AMOC directly only in 2004, this is not enough to calculate the trajectory of current trends. Therefore, they rely on more indirect indicators for which there is data from the 19th century - for example, analysis of the ocean surface temperature in the area where it most closely matches the circulation ocean.

While this extrapolation may not be very reliable evidence, the new findings are consistent with the results. research from the Potsdam Institute for the Study of Climate Change (Germany), published in 2021. This raises the concern of the scientific community and confirms the risks of stopping the AMOC in the coming decades.