Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

One of the things that makes it kind of difficult to talk about climate science is the fact that sometimes global warming can actually make things colder. Yeah, I know. Let me explain. Like there was that time when they were debating climate laws uh back in 2015 and Senator Inhof brought in a snowball from the outside to show that see it's cold outside. There's no global warming. Of course, that snowball is from a massive blizzard that blew through in February of that year that dropped 25 inches of snow across the Northeast and killed six people. The Weather Channel called it Winter Storm Neptune. In other words, extreme weather events. Here in Texas, actually, over the last decade or so, we've been hit by several different like blasts of arctic air that was caused by the weakening jetream. Like here in Dallas at the end of December, we had a day where the felt temperature dropped 55 degrees in a matter of three or four hours. Oh, and it was 84 on Christmas Day this year. 80% humidity. I had myself a swamp ass little Christmas. But yeah, we've been having these weird events where the polar vortex weakens. So instead of trapping all that cold air up at the poles, it gets all turbulent and then it spins off little blasts of polar air that go way further south than it normally would. So yeah, it's important to understand that you're just seeing wherever you are, you're just seeing a tiny part of a giant system. And sometimes you'll be colder than average, sometimes you'll be hotter. We're all just at the mercy of a chaotic global system. And there's one system in that system that threatens to disrupt the lives of hundreds of millions of people in North America and Europe and potentially even bring back the ice age. If you think the weather's crazy now, just wait for the AOT collapse. So, I talked about this before back in 2022. Uh the video back then was about the Gulf Stream collapse. That stream is part of a larger system called the Atlantic meridian overturning circulation or amoch for short or amo a muk. Is it run a muck? Think of the amoch like a large conveyor belt that circulates ocean currents around the world. It moves water from north to south and back again in a long cycle there in the Atlantic Ocean. It carries nutrients to help sustain life and it brings warmth to various parts of the world. Like if we didn't have the circulation, there would be much colder temperatures in northern and western Europe and sea ice when the Arctic would expand pretty much down into Europe. The circulation process starts as warm weather near the surface moves toward the north and south poles and that's where it cools forming into sea ice. Salt gets left behind in the ocean water as the ice forms and because of the large amount of salt, the water gets denser and it sinks down. This is where the term thermohaling current comes from. thermo for temperature, hailing for salinity, and it eventually gets pulled toward the surface and warms up again in a process called upwelling. And as it does this, it loses heat to the atmosphere and it warms the air and Europe. And then the cold water on the North Atlantic sinks down into the ocean and starts to flow south, pulling warm water from the tropics along its way. And thus is the great circle of life. Now, none of this is fast. The Amok circulation is like really slow. Like it takes like a thousand years for a cubic meter of water to complete the entire journey. And by the way, the Gulf Stream often gets confused with the Amokch. In fact, I think I did that in the last video. But yeah, the Gulf Stream is just part of the entire AO. So yeah, maybe instead of thinking of it as a conveyor belt, maybe the whole thing is like a highway system. Like a highway system and the Gulf Stream is just like a one part of the motorway for part of the journey. And the reason I'm bringing this up again is because, you know, it's been a few years. There's been more studies done. science be sciencing and um so yeah, I just thought that there would be uh a good chance to come in here and talk about the new studies that have been talking about the eventual potential collapse of the AMO and the studies that say that it's not going to happen. It gets a bit confusing — old lady science, you know, she she's SHE'S A REAL YOU GOT TO HANG ON TIGHT. — NOW, let's start with the big scary dismal stuff that I know you all came here to watch. We'll call this the sky is falling section. — [screaming] — So, back in 2021, a study in Nature GeoSciences showed that the AOCH was the weakest it's been in more than a thousand years. A study looked at 11 indicators like deep sea sediments and ocean temperature patterns going all the way back to 400 CE. And they found nine indicators that showed a consistent pattern of the AOCH weakening. A more recent study from 2024 used mooring and hydrographic data from the North Atlantic and found that the abyssal limb of the AOCH is weakening. The abyssal limb. Okay. So, so the AOK has different levels. It has an upper cell and a deep sea cell that's underneath it. The upper cell moves warm water from the South Atlantic Ocean to the North Atlantic and that's where it cools down, sinks, and then flows back down south. The abyssal cell is the deep sea cell of like colder water at the edge of Antarctica. Yeah. This is also known as Atlantic bottom water. I just find the term bottom water to be very funny. Anyway, this is actually the coldest and densest water like in the world in all the oceans of the world. But the study showed that the northward

movement of this current has weakened by 12% from 2000 to 2020. And it's thought that this is caused by the warming of that deep western Atlantic Ocean water, which they have measured an increase in temperature in those waters. And an increase in sea temperature, by the way, will also cause the water to expand and the sea level to rise in that area. Now, another study from 2024 showed that the collapse of the AOCH uh was actually pretty unlikely before the year 2100. That's some good news. But when those climate models were extended out to like 2,300 and 2500, they showed that it absolutely will collapse and that the tipping point for that collapse will only be in the next few decades. So, the study shows that 70% of climate models led to a collapse if carbon emissions keep going and if you extend the timeline out to like 2,300. That's at our current rate and intermediate level of emissions. to show a 37% chance of collapse. And it even showed that even if there were low emissions in the future, an ammon collapse happened in 25% of the models. This result actually kind of surprised uh one of the authors of the paper because he thought that the chance of collapse was probably less than 10%. As professor Stephan Robdorf told the Guardian, quote, "These numbers are not very certain, but we're talking about a matter of risk assessment where even a 10% chance of an AOC collapse would be far too high. We found that the tipping point where the shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 or 20 years or so. " Scientists started seeing warning signs of a tipping point about 5 years ago. In fact, observations in the far North Atlantic are already showing a downward trend that's consistent with the model's projections. Even at intermediate and low emission models, the AMO slows a ton by 2100 and then completely collapses afterwards. So, yeah, to scientists, this means that the shutdown risk is like way more serious than people realize. There's also a little bit of a mystery in AOCH research. Um, it turns out that there's a patch of cold water just south of Greenland that has basically resisted the warming that the rest of the oceans is experiencing and they're not quite sure why. — Whatever, I'll do what I want. — So, some researchers at the University of California, Riverside have been studying that recently, and they have come to the conclusion that the only explanation that explains it is that it fits the model that the Amok is slowing down. Using a century's worth of data, they reconstructed changes in the circulation system and compared them with around a hundred different climate models. And only the models that simulated a weakened AMO matched the real world data in that little patch off of Greenland. Models that assumed a stronger circulation didn't even come close. One of the study's authors said, quote, "It's a very robust correlation. If you look at the observations and compare them with all the simulations, only the weakened AMO scenario reproduces the cooling in this one region. " They also found that the AOX weakening correlates with decreased salinity. And that's another signal that warm, salty water is being moved northward. And it's not just computerized climate models that we have to go off of that shows that there could be a an eventual collapse. There's also what they call fingerprints from satellite images. These fingerprints kind of show that the water is weakening and increasing in temperature at the same time. So to climate researchers, this proves that the AMO weakening is already underway or it's more proof I should say. So that's a lot of scary studies and that all sounds bad. If not for us, then for our grandkids. But before you go building a survival bunker, there are some studies that say not so much. We can call this the sky is staying put section of the video. For example, a study published in Nature last year found that the AOCH is actually pretty resilient to extreme greenhouse gases. This is because according to the study authors anyway, the AMO can be driven by consistent winds in the southern ocean. Winds that can help sustain a weakened AMO. So even if the amox slows down the natural, you know, currents of the wind above the water can help to sustain it. They also found that the AMO can't collapse without a PMO. What is a PMO, you might be wondering? Well, it's the Pacific meridian overturning current and it can destabilize the AMO to the point of collapse. In fact, for the AMO to collapse, you kind of need a Pock to form according to the study. The good news is that they found a strong downwelling that has balanced the upwelling in the Atlantic that will prevent a peacock from forming, which would prevent the AOK from collapsing. You're getting all this, right? So, they ran a whole bunch of models and in almost all of their models, the Pimac did emerge, but the Southern Ocean upwelling overcame any destabilizing effects of it. Anyway, good news is they predicted an AMO collapse is unlikely, at least in this next century. Want more good news? Well, there was a paper published in Nature Communications in January of 2025. And in this paper, they found that the AOCH actually hasn't declined at all in the last 60 years. Our paper says that the Atlantic overturning has not declined yet. That doesn't say anything about its future, but it doesn't appear the anticipated changes have occurred yet. That sounds great. Pop the champagne if you want, but uh I should point out that there was a 2018 study that said that the AOK had declined over the last 70 years. So, these two are in direct uh conflict with each other. Basically, that research relied on ocean surface temperature measurements to track how the AMO changed. But measuring the surface temperature doesn't actually work that well. Researchers for this latest study took a different tack. They used data from 24 climate earth models created by the World Climate Research Program. And they found that the recent

surface temperature data didn't predict an AOC collapse. They took things a little bit further by looking at what they call air sea heat fluxes, which is an exchange of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. They found that a stronger amoch releases more heat from the ocean into the air over the North Atlantic. And by measuring that, they concluded that the AMO hasn't weakened at all from 1963 to 2017. I'm sure if I understood that, that would all sound really great. And in a little more positive news, a study by Caltech researchers found that even though the AMO will weaken because of climate change, it'll do so less than expected. They came to this conclusion based on density differences and real world measurements of the current strength over the last 20 years. And they found that the AMO will only weaken by about 18 to 43% by the end of the 21st century. And yeah, 43% is a lot. It is, but it's nowhere near where the, you know, disastrous climate models predict. As the study's lead author said, quote, "Our results imply that rather than a substantial decline, the AOCH is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21st century. Still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest. " They say that some of the extreme AOCH weakening projections came from basically biases and climate models. So, worry a little bit, maybe, not too much. But do worry a little bit because this has happened before about 13,000 years ago. What is this move? Real quick, I want to shout out some new channel members. We've gotten kind of behind on the shout outs lately with the holidays and everything. So, let's bless the new members with Power Zoe. Here we go. We got Judith Dior Royo, uh, Cayman 2324, Veronica Garcia, Randle Smith, Valkyy's Ride, K Honey, HD Nero, Russell Carter, Fire Iron and Spice, Advanced Shelf, Facty, Ostensible Muse, DF, Sonic says, Billy Dendren, and Critter Keeper. Thank you guys so much for being members. If you'd like to join them to get early access to videos or just be part of a cool community or have a little thing next to your uh name down in the comments makes you a little special, just click the join link down below. Have you ever heard of Lake Agassis? This is actually a really cool um event that happened. I should probably do a whole video about it. But yeah, like back at the very end of the ice age, um this massive ice lake of melt water uh formed in North America on top of all the glaciers that were up there and they called it Lake Agassis or at least current researchers call it that. But yeah, 12,900 years ago, the ice dam that kind of kept all that lake together uh collapsed and this dumped massive amounts of fresh water into the sea. Like some people point to this as maybe an explanation for flood myths around the world because it made the entire world's sea level rise overnight. But anyway, all that fresh water uh got into the ocean and it messed with that thermohaling current that I was talking about and this caused temperature fluctuations from 10 to 15° in the northern hemisphere. So there's a lot of debate around how much of an effect this might have had. Some people suggest that maybe it was a comet impact that set off that melt. Um yeah, there's a debate around that. There is no debate that this happened though. There was a 1300 year uh era of freezing that is known today as the younger dus. And some people believe that this might have been a cause of that. So that's kind of what we could expect to happen if the AOCH were to collapse today. Scientists predict that some European cities would see a drop of 10 to 15° C. But Europe wouldn't be the only place affected. The Atlantic Ocean would rise by 70 cm, basically submerging many coastal areas and cities. And in the southern hemisphere, regions would actually get a lot warmer than they already are. an AMO collapse. While not right at our doorstep, it is definitely something to be concerned about. In fact, it's so serious that Iceland declared it a national risk in November 2025. So, they've been looking at what policies and research might be needed, and they're already at work in a disaster preparedness policy. Some of the risks being evaluated include energy, food security, infrastructure, and transportation. Yeah, Iceland isn't waiting for some, you know, definitive long-term research study to come along. They're acting right now. They're they believe it's not if, but when. But yeah, the will it won't it collapse of the AOCH is something to keep an eye on for sure. But there's a lot more pressing climate issues to address in the near term. Things like food security, um ecosystem degradation, rising disease rates, that kind of thing. Luckily, as I was pointing out with Iceland, people and governments are taking it seriously and they're doing things about it. Now, you might be watching this and thinking like, what can you do to directly support conservation efforts around the world, which is a good thing to do, but it can get kind of confusing because you don't really know exactly what organizations are doing specifically. Um, it can all be very amorphous. But there is one organization I want to shout out that I find very interesting. It's called Planet Wild. And the reason why I find it interesting is because it's less like donating to a charity and more like crowdfunding for the planet. Every month, their community of around 20,000 or so members funds new, carefully selected missions to restore nature. These are targeted specific campaigns to solve a problem uh in various parts of the world, from clearing plastic from rivers in India to protecting an endangered seal population in the Baltic Sea. And the cool thing is they share all their missions in highquality video updates, which you can see on their YouTube channel, which it's worth a follow. You should check them out. Take for example mission 32 to help restore the Muga Valley in Spain. Uh the Muga Valley is what they call a green desert where like decades of coal mining

have changed the ecosystem basically to the point of collapse. Ironically, the problem is that there's too many trees. Um there's basically a large canopy of oak forests that have blocked the sun and killed off all the undergrowth. Uh the undergrowth and all the ecosystems that they maintain. So in this case, uh to help out, they're basically going to cut down some trees and introduce some important species like vultures. And these are the kind of projects that you might never have heard about that would just kind of fly under our cultural radars. But with Planet Wild, we get to actually support these kinds of projects and then see the impact that they're having. And even better, we get to be part of an engaged community of people who want to make a difference. It's why I became a member myself. To join us, you can give whatever amount, whatever feels good to you. Big or small, doesn't matter. Um, but the best part is, this is the fun part, is that the first hundred people who sign up using my code, Joe Scott 2, will get their first month paid for by me. You're welcome. Just scan the QR code on screen or click the link down in the description. This is real hands-on nature restoration. And the best part is you get to see results in less than 30 days. And you can cancel anytime, no questions asked. So, if you want to see Planet Wild in action, just check out their mission restoring a green desert right here. So, that's it for today. Thank you guys so much for watching. If this is your first time here, I recommend maybe you check out this video. It's about the best places to live to survive climate change. I put it out a few years ago. There are these places that they call uh survivability islands. I think that's what they call them. um, climate change islands, like places you can go that would be best to survive if the worst of climate change should happen. So, yeah, I invite you to go check that out if you're new to the channel. Maybe you'll like that one. And if you do, I invite you to subscribe. I come back with videos just like this every Monday. As always, check out The Book of Mysteries on sale now on Amazon. It's a collection of some of the best mystery topics that we've covered on this channel and then some. Worked on it for a couple of years. It's out. Really excited about it. It's got some good reviews, too. Anyway, link down in the description. Go check it out. But that's it for today. You guys go out there, have an eye opening rest of the week. Do stay safe and I'll see you next Monday. Love you guys. Take care.