A recent study cautions that the rapidly melting Antarctic ice is having a catastrophic impact on deep ocean currents by dramatically slowing them down.
According to a group of Australian experts, the deep-water movements that power ocean currents may decrease by 40% by 2050.
Around the world, the currents transport essentials like heat, air, carbon, and nutrition.
According to earlier studies, Europe might get cooler if the North Atlantic current slows down.
The research, which was written up in the magazine Nature, also issues a warning that the delay may lessen the ocean’s capacity to take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The study describes how the downward flow of cold, dense seawater towards the sea floor close to Antarctica contributes to the Earth’s network of ocean currents.
However, as the ice cap’s fresh water evaporates, the density and salinity of the seawater decrease, and the rate of descent decreases.
According to experts, these deep ocean currents, or “overturnings,” in the northern and southern hemispheres have been generally stable for thousands of years, but the warming climate is now causing disruptions.
According to research leader Professor Matthew England, “our modelling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctic overturning will slow by more than 40% in the next 30 years and on a trajectory that looks headed towards collapse.”
Professor England, an oceanographer at Sydney’s University of New South Wales, said during a press conference that if the oceans had lungs, this would be one of them.
As ocean circulation decreased, water on the top rapidly hit its capacity to absorb carbon and was not then replenished by non-carbon-saturated water from deeper levels, according to Dr. Adele Morrison, a contributor to the study.
According to the 2018 Atlas Study, the Atlantic Ocean circulation system had altered considerably over the previous 150 years and was now weaker than it had been in more than 1,000 years.
It was hypothesised that modifications to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), which resembles a conveyor belt, could chill the ocean and north-west Europe and have an impact on deep-sea habitats.
In the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow about a global catastrophe, the Amoc’s shutdown was sensationalised.
Dr. Morrison, however, asserted that the coastal habitats and Antarctica itself would be more affected by a slowing of the southern overturning.
When creatures perish, nutrients sink to the bottom and are brought to the surface by turning. to replenish nutrients for seafood and the world environment, she told The Durant Times.
“A feedback on how much of Antarctica dissolves in the future is the other more significant consequence that it could have. It creates a pathway for warmer waters that might lead to more melting, which would have a negative feedback loop that would contribute more meltwater to the ocean and impede circulation even more,” she continued.
The models, which were created over the course of two years and 35 million computing hours, indicate that deep water circulation in the Antarctic may decelerate at a pace twice as fast as that in the North Atlantic.
Climate scientist Alan Mix from Oregon State University and co-author of the most recent IPCC report said, “[It’s] stunning to see that happen so quickly.”
Although it has not yet been taken into account in IPCC climate change models, the impact of Antarctic meltwater on ocean currents will be “considerable,” according to Prof. England.