THE NEW CLIMATE

Are We Only 33 Years Away from the Atlantic Ocean’s Tipping Point?

A study predicts an AMOC collapse by 2057, igniting a storm of scrutiny over potential catastrophe

Global Sea Surface Currents and Temperature (Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

In the quiet Danish countryside of 2021, climate physicist Peter Ditlevsen was building more than just a house. As he hammered nails and sawed wood, his mind raced with thoughts of looming global catastrophes that could make even the most sensational Hollywood disaster films seem inoffensive by comparison.

His focus? The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’s (AMOC) tipping point — Yes, the same phenomenon dramatized in the apocalyptic film “The Day After Tomorrow”, with its superstorms, climate upheavals, and a frozen New York City. The AMOC is the ocean’s vital circulatory system, a vast network of deep and surface flows that doesn’t just move warm and cold water between the poles. It’s so fundamental to Earth’s systems that it shapes regional weather, the water cycle, and even global food security.

And now, it was showing signs of faltering.

With the urgency of a man racing against time, Ditlevsen coded a model of the AMOC, refining calculations from his former collaborator, Niklas Boers. He treated the AMOC as a tipping point system…