When you add energy to a system, chaos increases.
Quote:
7. Danger signs: a key Atlantic Ocean current system is near collapse
The climate over the past few thousand years has been unusually stable, helping bring about the rise of modern civilization. However, ice core studies reveal that the “normal” climate for Earth is one of frequent extreme jumps – like a light switch flicking on and off. So it is incorrect to think that global warming will lead to a slow and steady increase in temperature that humans can readily adapt to. Global warming could push the climate system past a threshold where a sudden, irreversible climate shift would occur.
[snip]
If the AMOC were to shut down, the Gulf Stream would no longer pump warm, tropical water to the North Atlantic. Average temperatures would cool in Europe and North America by three degrees Celsius (5°F) or more in just a few years – not enough to trigger a full-fledged ice age, but enough cooling to bring snows in June and killing frosts in July and August to New England and northern Europe, such as occurred in the famed 1816 “year without a summer”
|
AMOC is blocking the Beaufort Gyre.
Quote:
In the long term, loss of the ice shelf buttressing the Thwaites Glacier could lead to its rapid disintegration over a period of decades or centuries, resulting in the loss of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and an increase in global sea levels of about 10 feet.
|
Isn't Thwaites Glacier (at least the part in peril) 10/11ths underwater already? The part above water would have to be [tens of] thousands of feet high.