Photo by Christian Crocker on Unsplash

Terrifying New Study Finds That Ocean Currents Will Soon Collapse

Brace yourselves for a globe-shaking marine ecological disaster.

Will Lockett
Published in
5 min readJun 7, 2023

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Have you seen The Day After Tomorrow? This early naughties disaster movie’s whole plot revolved around climate change turning off global ocean currents and plunging the world into a sudden Ice Age. Many lambasted the film for exaggerating how soon these currents could collapse and how rapidly their knock-on effects can be felt, as we thought that such events wouldn’t happen for well over a century. But a recent study, which focused more on the Antarctic portion of these currents, found that global ocean currents could collapse in only 30 years! What’s more, while the knock-on effects of this are completely different to those seen in The Day After Tomorrow, they are arguably no less devastating. The question has to be asked, is there anything we can do to stop this?

Let’s start at the beginning. What are global ocean currents, and what powers them?

Global Ocean Current diagram — WikiCC

The global ocean current is a series of interlinked deep water and surface currents driven by winds and ocean saltiness. You see, in the water near Greenland and in…

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Will Lockett

Independent journalist covering global politics, climate change and technology. Get articles early at www.planetearthandbeyond.co