How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
The Daily
Lessons from the past AMOC collapse
The collapse of the AMOC around 12,800 years ago led to rapid climate change, with temperatures dropping significantly in the Northern Hemisphere, forests being replaced by tundra, ice sheets growing, and evidence of cooler and drier conditions in California and the southwestern US. This drastic change may have contributed to the disappearance of early hunter-gatherer civilizations as they faced the sudden cold. Despite the potential outcomes, scientists are cautious about predicting the exact scenario if the AMOC were to collapse again as the world is currently experiencing warming. However, they anticipate that Northern Europe and surrounding areas would experience much colder temperatures, surpassing even those of 200 years ago before the Industrial Revolution.
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