Number of papers on this page: 11

Stability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation inferred by subsidence-corrected sea level change — Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2025; Alberto Boretti

“The stability of the AMOC is a subject of intense scientific debate, with some studies suggesting an impending collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, while others argue for its resilience and stability based on different proxies. This study highlights how sea level differences, corrected for subsidence, provide a robust and simple proxy for AMOC stability. A comparison of tide gauge data from The Battery, New York, and Brest, France, corrected for land subsidence using GPS measurements, reveals a negligible difference in absolute sea level rise between these locations, reinforcing the stability of the AMOC within the period 1960 to 2024. These findings challenge claims of AMOC weakening and emphasize the necessity of accurate corrections for subsidence in sea level analyses.”

Can we trust projections of AMOC weakening based on climate models that cannot reproduce the past? — Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 2023; McCarthy & Caesar

“The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a crucial element of the Earth's climate system, is projected to weaken over the course of the twenty-first century which could have far reaching consequences for the occurrence of extreme weather events, regional sea level rise, monsoon regions and the marine ecosystem. The latest IPCC report puts the likelihood of such a weakening as ‘very likely’. As our confidence in future climate projections depends largely on the ability to model the past climate, we take an in-depth look at the difference in the twentieth century evolution of the AMOC based on observational data (including direct observations and various proxy data) and model data from climate model ensembles. We show that both the magnitude of the trend in the AMOC over different time periods and often even the sign of the trend differs between observations and climate model ensemble mean, with the magnitude of the trend difference becoming even greater when looking at the CMIP6 ensemble compared to CMIP5.”

Atlantic overturning inferred from air-sea heat fluxes indicates no decline since the 1960s — Nature Communications, 2025; Terhaar et al.

“On these timescales, air-sea heat flux anomalies are strongly linked to AMOC-driven northward heat flux anomalies through the conservation of energy. On annual timescales, however, air-sea heat flux anomalies are mostly altered by atmospheric variability and less by AMOC anomalies. Based on the here identified relationship and observation-based estimates of the past air-sea heat flux in the North Atlantic from reanalysis products, the decadal averaged AMOC at 26.5°N has not weakened from 1963 to 2017 although substantial variability exists at all latitudes.”

Continued Atlantic overturning circulation even under climate extremes — Nature, 2025; Baker et al.

“Remarkably, a PMOC does emerge in almost all models, but it is too weak to balance all of the Southern Ocean upwelling, suggesting that an AMOC collapse is unlikely this century. Our findings reveal AMOC-stabilizing mechanisms with implications for past and future AMOC changes, and hence for ecosystems and ocean biogeochemistry.”

The Response of the Ocean Thermal Skin Layer to Variations in Incident Infrared Radiation — JGR Oceans, 2018; Wong & Minnett

“This paper investigates the physical mechanism between the absorption of IR radiation and its effect on heat transfer at the air-sea boundary. The hypothesis is that given the heat lost through the air-sea interface is controlled by the TSL, the TSL adjusts in response to variations in incident IR radiation to maintain the surface heat loss. This modulates the flow of heat from below and hence controls upper ocean heat content. This hypothesis is tested using the increase in incoming longwave radiation from clouds and analyzing vertical temperature profiles in the TSL retrieved from sea-surface emission spectra. The additional energy from the absorption of increasing IR radiation adjusts the curvature of the TSL such that the upward conduction of heat from the bulk of the ocean into the TSL is reduced. The additional energy absorbed within the TSL supports more of the surface heat loss. Thus, more heat beneath the TSL is retained leading to the observed increase in upper ocean heat content.”

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and its Hypothetical Collapse — Ocean MIT, 2022; Roquet & Wunsch

"To a great extent, the emphasis on the AMOC stems from a cartoon picture of the ocean circulation of the ”Great Ocean Conveyor” and the invocation of a zoomorphic attribute ”the climate is an angry beast...”, recently reproduced as part of the New York Times story. Intense research in the past 30 years demonstrates however that such a sweeping sketch of the AMOC fails to capture the complex, intrinsically fully turbulent, three-dimensional nature of the real flow field as portrayed in observational studies"

Satellite-based time-series of sea-surface temperature since 1980 for climate applications — Nature, 2024; Embury et al.

Shows that global sea-surface temperatures have NOT followed a curve corresponding to CO2.

Switch Between El Nino and La Nina is Caused by Subsurface Ocean Waves Likely Driven by Lunar Tidal Forcing — Nature 2019; Lin & Quian

“Here, we demonstrate that the switch between El Nino and La Nina is caused by a subsurface ocean wave propagating from western Pacific to central and eastern Pacific and then triggering development of SST anomaly. This is based on analysis of all ENSO events in the past 136 years using multiple long-term observational datasets. The wave’s slow phase speed and decoupling from atmosphere indicate that it is a forced wave. Further analysis of Earth’s angular momentum budget and NASA’s Apollo Landing Mirror Experiment suggests that the subsurface wave is likely driven by lunar tidal gravitational force.”

Florida Current transport observations reveal four decades of steady state — Nature Communications, 2024; Volkov et al.

“Here, we reassess motion-induced voltages measured on a submarine cable and reevaluate the overall trend in the inferred FC transport. We find that the cable record beginning in 2000 requires a correction for the secular change in the geomagnetic field. This correction removes a spurious trend in the record, revealing that the FC has remained remarkably stable.”

HOW EFFECTIVE IS GREENHOUSE (GH) WARMING OF SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES (SST)? — International seminars on nuclear war and planetary emergencies, 2006; S. Fred Singer

“The upper layers of the ocean are heated by solar short-wave (SW) radiation, which penetrates to some considerable depth, depending on wavelength and turbidity (Jerlov 1976, Lee et al 2005). With an average ocean albedo of only 0.09, most of the visible part of the solar spectrum heats the euphotic zone; then wave action and eddy mixing communicates this energy downward, heating the “mixed layer,” conventionally taken as the upper 100 meters. But long-wave (LW) radiation, typically around 10 microns and downwelling from the warm atmosphere as a result of the GH effect, cannot penetrate into water; it is absorbed in the “skin.” From there, much of the LW energy is re-radiated upward and also transmitted to the overlying atmosphere as sensible heat or used up in the evaporation of the “skin,” adding latent heat to the atmospheric boundary layer. Therefore, the LW contribution to heating the bulk ocean may be minor; the SST should not rise appreciably in response to the anthropogenic GH effect.”

The Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation — Atmosphere Ocean, 2022; Lin & Quian

“The AMO is a global-scale coupled ocean-atmosphere oscillation of the climate system with significant sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in all ocean basins.”