'It is very plausible that we've fallen off a cliff already and don't know it,' said one researcher in response to a study showing a key ocean current could collapse this century.
The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that this crucial ocean system is in peril. Since 2004, observations from a network of ocean buoys [have shown] the AMOC getting weaker—though the limited time frame of that data set makes it hard to establish a trend. Scientists have also analyzed multiple"" indicators of the current's strength, including microscopic organisms and tiny sediments from the seafloor, to show the system is in its weakest state in more than 1,000 years.
For thousands of years, the Gulf Stream has carried warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern North American seaboard and across the Atlantic to Europe. As human-caused global heating melts the Greenland ice sheet, massive quantities of fresh water are released into the North Atlantic, cooling the AMOC—which delivers the bulk of the Gulf Stream's heat—toward a"tipping point" that could stop the current in its tracks.
"It is very plausible that we've fallen off a cliff already and don't know it," Hali Kilbourne, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science,."I fear, honestly, that by the time any of this is settled science, it's way too late to act."
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