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Scientists warn that a key Atlantic current could collapse – NBC Los Angeles
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Scientists warn that a key Atlantic current could collapse – NBC Los Angeles

Venezuela lost its last glacier this year. The Greenland ice sheet is losing, on average, 30 million tons of ice per hour. Ice loss from the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday” glacier because its collapse could precipitate rapid ice loss in Antarctica, may be unstoppable.

These are just some of the surprising findings from more than 50 leading snow and ice scientists, detailed in a new report from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.

The report summarizes the state of snow and ice in 2024: In short, experts agree, it has been a horrible year for the frozen parts of the Earth, an expected result of global warming. What’s more, leading cryosphere scientists are increasingly concerned that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key ocean current that governs heat cycles in the Atlantic Ocean, is on a path toward collapse.

A rapid stop of the current would cause rapid cooling in the North Atlantic, warming in the southern hemisphere and extreme changes in precipitation. If that happens, the new report suggests, northern Europe could cool by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit within a decade.

The report highlights a shift in consensus: Scientists once thought that tipping points, like the collapse of AMOC, were distant or remote possibilities. Now, it appears that some of those thresholds are more likely to be crossed and there is less chance of reversing the situation.

“The latest science doesn’t necessarily tell us that things are different from what we knew before, but it tells us with more confidence and certainty that these things are more likely to happen,” said Helen Findlay, author of the report. and professor and biological oceanographer at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England. “The longer we record these things, and the longer we can observe them and start to understand and monitor them, the more certainty there is in the system and we start to really understand how these tipping points are working.”

Last month, 44 leading scientists wrote in an open letter to the leaders of the Nordic countries that AMOC collapse remained “highly uncertain””but the evidence in favor of such a collapse was mounting and the risks have been underestimated. They warned that dramatic changes to the AMOC would “likely lead to unprecedented extreme weather” and “potentially threaten the viability of agriculture in northwest Europe.”

The new report also draws attention to the risk of AMOC collapsing.

In addition, it projects that approximately two-thirds of the glacier ice in the European Alps will be lost by 2050 if global greenhouse gas emissions continue apace. An estimated 10 million people are already at risk of glacial flooding in Iceland, Alaska and Asia, a phenomenon that is already occurring as meltwater collapses ice dams and rapidly floods downstream. If high emissions continue, the report adds, models suggest sea levels could rise about 10 feet by the year 2100, endangering parts of many coastal cities.

The report was published as world leaders gathered Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for the United Nations’ COP29 climate conference.

“Timing is everything,” said Julie Brigham-Grette, a professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of the new report.

He said the group hopes to draw the attention of world leaders: “The sense of urgency could not be greater. We have been talking about urgency for a decade. It’s almost starting to seem like a useless word. What is more than “urgent”? ‘Catastrophic?’ “We’ve run out of ways to describe it.”

To date, the report says, world governments are failing to deliver on the promises they made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris Agreement.

Even if they were on track, those commitments are insufficient to achieve global climate goals, the authors say. On paper, global pledges would limit the rise in global temperatures to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) this century. That is well short of the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C.

Currently, global temperatures are on track to rise more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), on average.

“I feel pretty frustrated,” Findlay said. “I really don’t understand how they don’t realize the seriousness of the problem.”

On Monday in Baku, world leaders agreed on new rules for a global market for trading carbon credits. In a press release, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev, who has been Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources since 2018, said the agreement was a “game-changing” tool to direct climate finance to the developing world.

But he also acknowledged, in a speech to delegates, that the world is “on the road to ruin” under current climate policies.

That warning and the new report come amid fears that the United States will back away from its climate commitments and withdraw from the Paris Agreement after Donald Trump takes office in January. Triumph wants to eliminate the US of the international treaty, and he that process began during his first presidential administration. President Joe Biden reversed the measure in 2021.

Peter Neff, a glaciologist and climatologist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the new report, said its authors clearly communicated the scientific consensus.

“For a glaciologist it is not surprising at all. Overall, there is no good news regarding ice on Earth. Everything, for the most part, goes in one direction,” Neff said.

But he added that he still found the report’s findings surprising: “These documents can hit you like a ton of bricks, and that’s intentional.”

This story first appeared. on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News: