A colossal storm system that freezes everything in its path, with temperatures dropping to -101°C; huge hailstones hitting Tokyo; gigantic tornadoes destroying Los Angeles; New York frozen in ice… In 2004, the Hollywood film The Day Afterfrom director Roland Emmerich, depicted the catastrophic consequences of a disruption in the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to a new ice age.
From a scientific point of view, the scenario is completely unrealistic, both in terms of the magnitude of the cooling and the time scale: in a few days rather than decades or hundreds of years.
The fact remains that the blockbuster addresses a threat which increasingly worries scientists and which gives rise to lively debates: the risk of a collapse of the main ocean circulation of the Atlantic. This Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (or AMOC, its English acronym) contributes in particular to maintaining a mild climate in Europe and to regulating the temperature of North America.
In an open letter, published at the end of October 2024 and addressed to the leaders of the Nordic Council of Ministers, 44 climate scientists warned of the risk of a collapse of the AMOC, with the effects “irreversible” et “devastating”in particular for the Nordic countries, but also for the whole world. Several recent studies, they point out, suggest that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “greatly underestimated” this threat and that crossing a tipping point is a “serious possibility in the coming decades”.
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