Forum / Technogenic Climate Change: A Summary of Thirty Years' Studies

• 
  strannikov

  Jun 13, 01:35pm

  Stefan Rahmstorf, whom I quoted and alluded to in my Fictionaut essay "A Measure of How Far Behind We Are" (August 2021), has just published (10 April 2024) a summary of his three-decades long research and data analyses from numerous sources to issue yet another warning about prospects of AMOC collapse (whether imminent or inevitable). (Note also that Rahmstorf does not resort to my naming of contributing processes as "Technogenic Climate Change", as I began in June 2019 in my Fictionaut essay "Naming the Scourge We Made".)

  https://tos.org/oceanography/article/is-the-atlantic-overturning-circulation-approaching-a-tipping-point

  Rahmstorf's appeal, for all the fresh data and analyses, is not markedly different from what he's been reporting and arguing for some years already: his concession in this latest piece is that many previous climate models have made insufficient references to both freshwater contributions in the North Atlantic from Greenland ice sheet melting and those direct effects upon ocean water salinity in the immediate region and as those effects migrate out courtesy of the AMOC mechanism.

  The data remain both indicative and uncertain as to naming a date for the advent of AMOC collapse: but as Rahmstorf emphasizes yet again, AMOC collapse is nothing you want to see happen on a good day or on a bad day. The indicative data suggest that both the good days and the bad days available to us in which to act to avert AMOC collapse are surely fewer today than when Rahmstorf began his career some thirty years ago.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Jun 17, 08:06pm

  Congratulations, Edward. I'm clapping.

• 
  strannikov

  Jun 18, 12:49pm

  Sam: thanks for taking a look at Rahmstorf's assessment. He impresses me with his command of the data and for making his arguments public within the constraints that the data demand.

  I have no comparable command of the data, but while consequently I feel free of the constraints that the data impose, I don't care to exaggerate the case beyond my limited understanding of what I take the data to be saying.

  It remains the case that global climatic and meteorological conditions are out there in the wild, their dynamic processes occurring with their own inherent and respective velocities. The metrics and measurements occur only with the frequency with which we can arrange them and collect them, using only the methods at our disposal. Only after these occurrences can the raw data be available for analysis and explication. --I think one fair extrapolation to be drawn from Rahmstorf's presentation is that the time lag alone of the data collection/data analysis/data publication sequence puts us at however slight or however great a temporal disadvantage when assessing "current states" of the climate and of climate models, especially at such a comparatively late date. The possible danger, of course, is that if the temporal sequence is so severely compressed when actual conditions are so aggravated, we could lurch directly into and beyond a tipping point before we even realized it and after which it would be utterly too late to respond (except to the ensuing consequences). We will not be afforded any second chances if we do blow past the AMOC collapse tipping point.

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