Global warming is disrupting an Antarctic current system that life on Earth relies on | Salon.com

Source: Global warming is disrupting an Antarctic current system that life on Earth relies on | Salon.com

Not every scientist was impressed with the modeling in the study. 

“The study is based on a model which is unlikely to be very close to reality,”  Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) told Salon by email.  Trenberth said that the abstract noted they had “limited measurements” that affected their ability to link the change to specific “drivers.” 

“There are big issues in getting the modeling right, including how much snow falls on Antarctica and actually builds up the ice sheet, as is happening in East Antarctica,” Trenberth continued. “That snow has its origins in the so-called melt water through evaporation from the strong southern ocean winds.” 

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“Models do not do this well,” he concluded.

Other oceanic currents are being disrupted by climate change too. In 2021, a study in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology that the Kuroshio Current and Extension (KCE) is warming, adjusting its latitudinal position northward, and possibly increasing the amount of warm water that it moves north in the process as a result of climate change. The KCE forms the main western boundary current as part of the North Pacific ocean gyre (meaning a large system of circulating currents) that spans from the North American Pacific Coast to Polynesia.

“The Kuroshio Current Extension is home to some of the highest biodiversity (number of organisms) in the world ocean today,” Adriane R. Lam, a paleoceanographer and Binghamton University postdoctoral fellow who co-authored the study, wrote to Salon at the time. “This is one reason why Japan’s fishing industry is so robust.” These fisheries would be severely and negatively affected by a disruption to KCE.

Similarly, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) for short was found by a recent study to be at its weakest in 1,600 years. If AMOC shuts down, temperatures will drop all over Europe as the number of storms increases; rising sea levels along the North American eastern seaboard will cause millions to flee their homes; and changing weather conditions will lead to food shortages in India, West Africa and South America.