By Elise Cutts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: New research shows that present-day iceberg loss from Greenland stacks up to some of the most dramatic iceberg-slinging episodes in recent geological history. Such events involved the disintegration of an ice sheet over North America and coincided with the weakening or failure of vital ocean currents in the North Atlantic—as well as severe climate swings. Despite this concerning parallel, there’s reason to think that modern iceberg loss from Greenland won’t disrupt ocean circulation within the next few decades, according to authors of the study,  published in  Science . ...The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or  AMOC , flows northward along the east coast of North America before veering east toward Scandinavia. Along the way, evaporation leaves behind water that’s increasingly cool and salty and therefore dense. In the Arctic, this dense, cold water sinks to join deepwater currents headed south to the Antarctic. Shutti...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/05/change-ocean-collapse-atlantic-meridional/ Source: By  Sarah Kaplan , The Washington Post  Excerpt: Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse. In recent years,  scientists have warned  about a weakening of the  Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation  (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropgulics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems. ...But  the new analysis , published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/02/25/atlantic-ocean-currents-weakening-amoc-gulf-stream/ Source:  By  Chris Mooney ,   Andrew Freedman , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: A growing body of evidence suggests that a massive change is underway in the sensitive circulation system of the Atlantic Ocean, a group of scientists  said Thursday . The  Atlantic meridional overturning circulation  (AMOC), a system of currents that includes the  Florida Current  and the Gulf Stream, is now “in its weakest state in over a millennium,” these experts say. This has implications for everything from the climate of Europe to the rates of sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast. Although evidence of the system’s weakening has been published before, the new research cites 11 sources of “proxy” evidence of the circulation’s strength, including  clues hidden in seafloor mud  as well as  patterns of ocean temperatures . Th...