Actualidad
IFIMAC-UAM Climate Colloquium: Atlantic Ocean Circulation: a Dangerous Tipping Point for European Climate?
- 23 de mayo 2025
- a las 12.00h
- Sala Polivalente, Plaza Mayor de la UAM
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) has a major impact on climate, not just around the northern Atlantic but globally. Paleoclimatic data show it has been rather unstable in the past, leading to some of the most dramatic and abrupt climate shifts known.
These instabilities are due to two different types of tipping points, linked to amplifying feedbacks in the large-scale salt transport and in the convective mixing which drives the flow. Of particular concern is the evidence for an ongoing weakening of the AMOC: it likely is already at its weakest in a millennium.
These tipping points present a major risk of abrupt ocean circulation and climate shifts as we push our planet further out of the stable Holocene climate into uncharted waters.
The lecture will discuss the paleoclimatic evidence, the instability mechanisms, the evidence for an AMOC slowdown and how close we may be to a dangerous tipping point of existential importance to Europe.
Speaker: Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics os the Ocean at the University of Potsdam since 2000, is one of the most authoritative voices worldwide in the study of ocean currents and their role in climate change. His career includes participating as a lead author of the United Nations Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and being recognized with numerous awards, including the Alfred Wegener Medal (2024) and the Climate Communication Prize of the American Geophysical Union (2017).