PROTECTIONISTS VS FREE MARKET

US Lawmakers Say Sequoia, Other VC Firms Fueled China’s Tech Rise

Mackenzie Hawkins
Thu, February 8, 2024


(Bloomberg) -- US lawmakers say five top venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, have fueled China’s technological rise with at least $3 billion of investments in key strategic sectors.

Almost two-thirds of the investment from Sequoia and its peers — including Qualcomm Ventures, Walden International, GSR Ventures and GGV Capital — has gone to Chinese artificial-intelligence companies that have supported the country’s military and enabled human rights abuses, the bipartisan US House Select Committee on China said in a report. More than $1 billion has gone to Chinese semiconductor firms, the panel said, as chip technology has become a key geopolitical battleground between Washington and Beijing.

Some of the firms criticized the report as outdated or exaggerated. It follows a months-long investigation into years of China investments by the five VC giants. The lawmakers called out investments into companies like ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, as well as entities that are now blacklisted by the US. VC firms also invested $35 million in a Chinese semiconductor firm after it was sanctioned, the report says, without naming the specific firms involved.

Sequoia Capital said in a statement that “we take US national security issues seriously and have always had processes in place to ensure compliance with US law.” It said its Chinese offshoot is now “fully independent” with its own brand, HongShan.

“Qualcomm Ventures invests in companies worldwide as part of its engagement with the global technology ecosystem,” spokesperson Christie Thoene said in a statement. “Qualcomm’s investments are generally small in any given market compared to venture firms and constitute less than 2% of the total investments discussed in today’s report.”

The remaining three firms didn’t respond or couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the committee’s findings, which were reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

The US has been working to curb China’s development of advanced semiconductor technology and AI models, citing the prospect that cutting-edge technology could give Beijing a military edge. President Joe Biden has issued restrictions on shipments of chips and chipmaking equipment to China, and is standing up a screening program for US investments in key strategic sectors including AI, semiconductors and quantum computing. A broad bipartisan effort to codify those investment restrictions failed late last year due to some Republican opposition, and key lawmakers have been meeting over the past several months to try to hash out a deal.

“Decades of investment — including funding, knowledge transfer, and other intangible benefits — from US VCs have helped build and strengthen” China’s priority sectors,the lawmakers wrote in their report.

Bloomberg Businessweek

Lenin: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism 

Published: First published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form, Petrograd. Published according to the manuscript and verified with the text of the pamphlet. Source: ...

US considering curbs to keep Chinese 'smart cars' out of the country - Bloomberg News

Reuters
Thu, February 8, 2024 

Cars to be exported sit at a terminal in the port of Yantai

(Reuters) - The Biden administration is considering restricting imports of Chinese "smart cars" and related components amid growing U.S. concerns about data security, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The measures would also apply to electric vehicles and parts originating from China, no matter where they are assembled, in a bid to prevent Chinese makers from moving cars and components into the United States through third countries such as Mexico, the report said.

The measures could also apply to other countries about which the U.S. has data concerns, Bloomberg said.

According to the report, U.S. officials are particularly concerned about the troves of data collected by so-called smart cars, including EVs and other types of connected and autonomous vehicles.

(Reporting by Angela Christy and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Gerry Doyle)

Solar company CubicPV scraps plans for US silicon wafer factory

Thu, February 8, 2024 

 Plants grow through an array of solar panels in Fort Lauderdale


By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) - Solar energy equipment manufacturer CubicPV on Thursday said it had scrapped plans to build a major U.S. silicon wafer factory, citing a collapse in product prices and soaring construction costs.

The announcement is a blow to the Biden administration's ambitions to create a homegrown solar energy supply chain to support surging U.S. demand for the renewable energy source. China produces about 98% of the world's wafers, the building blocks of solar cells that are assembled into panels.

CubicPV, which is backed in part by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, had been seeking to become a pioneer in domestic wafer manufacturing with plans to complete a 10 gigawatt factory this year.

The company was poised to leverage generous new federal tax credits for solar projects that use American-made equipment. But rules unveiled last year allow solar facilities to claim the subsidy even if their panels contain overseas-made wafers -- an obstacle for rolling out domestic wafer factories.

At the same time, global prices for solar wafers have fallen 70% since the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's landmark climate change law. A wave of new Asian solar production has prompted broad concern about the fate of many proposed U.S. factories.

A CubicPV spokesperson, Laureen Sanderson, would not comment on how specific policies impacted the project.

Instead of focusing on wafers, CubicPV said it will restructure and use its proprietary technology to make panels.

"Together with our Board, we've concluded that the one thing that could truly make a difference in humanity’s fight against climate change and the US's ability to realize a solar manufacturing renaissance is to invent a better panel," CubicPV Chief Executive Frank van Mierlo said in a statement.

Van Mierlo, who has led the company for 16 years, will step down as CEO. Tim McCaffery, global investment director with Thai industrial conglomerate SCG, a CubicPV investor, will lead the company through a transition period.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; editing by Diane Craft)

US chipmakers don't have enough workers. Biden hopes a new $5 billion plan will help.

Ben Werschkul
·Washington Correspondent
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Chipmakers are struggling to get enough Americans trained for the positions needed to keep pace with growing demand. The Biden administration on Friday announced its latest effort to help alleviate the problem.

The White House said Friday that the US expects to invest more than $5 billion in a public-private consortium aimed at supporting research and development in advanced computer chips.

A key part of the mission of this National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) would be to stand up a "Workforce Center of Excellence" funded with hundreds of millions of those dollars. The center plans to set up shop in different regions of the US to try and spur the training of more semiconductor engineers.

"I cannot overestimate how important this is," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said of the workforce efforts on a call with reporters this week. "Every semiconductor company we talk to says their success will rely upon having enough highly trained, qualified people to work in the industry," she added.

It remains to be seen if the new effort will be enough to make a dent in labor market concerns that have emerged as a significant roadblock in the effort to bring more chipmaking to the US, not to mention President Biden’s reelection efforts.

Until this week's announcement, much of the responsibility for training workers fell to state and local governments as well as the companies themselves. But observers repeatedly warned that those efforts wouldn’t be enough, with more dramatic policy solutions likely becoming inevitable.

And with efforts to alleviate the problem via immigration likely foreclosed by the political climate in Washington, the focus has turned toward training new workers.

Arizona is set to be a hotbed of the growing US chip sector but has already seen labor issues impinge on those plans. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is at work on a flagship fabrication plant in northern Phoenix but recently announced a delay in the plant's full-scale launch from 2024 to 2025. It cited worker shortages as a reason for the delay.

Intel (INTC) is also reportedly slowing the construction timetable on its $20 billion plant in Ohio, but that delay has primarily been caused by a slowing chip market as well as issues with the rollout of government grant money, according to the Wall Street Journal.

President Joe Biden toured the under-constructon TSMC Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility in Phoenix in December 2022. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) 

A need to 'scale up'

The White House's workforce plan, per a fact sheet released by the administration, is to launch new programs but also leverage the existing local efforts to "scale up proven education and training programs."

A senior administration official added this week that the workforce efforts would be focused on both supporting the manufacturing capacity as well as the emerging research and development efforts.

The overall goal of the Biden administration’s effort is to reverse a downward spiral for the industry in the US in recent decades. American semiconductor manufacturing’s share of the global market has fallen from nearly 40% in 1990 to less than 10% today, according to the White House.

The situation is even worse with the world’s most advanced semiconductors, 100% of which are currently manufactured overseas. The plants under construction in the US are designed to change that, but the workforce issues could only grow in the years ahead.

"It's just become a huge issue, ... and it's just not clear where these workers are coming from," noted Greg Wright, a professor of economics at the University of California Merced, in an interview last week.

"If we can't even get the workforce straightened out, I don't know what's going to happen," he added.


President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law on Aug. 9, 2022, and it has been the subject of intense lobbying in the 17 months since. Semiconductor giants like Intel, Micron (MU), IBM (IBM), and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company have all been vying for a piece of the money.

In total, the bill sets aside about $50 billion for grants to the semiconductor sector. That is divided between $39 billion earmarked for manufacturers and $11 billion set aside for chip research and design purposes.

Friday’s announcement was focused on that latter pot of money, with the NSTC being described as the centerpiece of the administration’s R&D efforts.

Still to come are the highly anticipated direct grants to companies. Most of that money has not yet been allocated, but administration officials promise more details within the next two months.

Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

White House touts $11 billion US semiconductor R&D program

Fri, February 9, 2024


By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House on Friday touted the U.S. government's plan to spend $11 billion on semiconductor-related research and development and said it was launching the $5 billion National Semiconductor Technology Center.

Congress in August 2022 approved the landmark Chips and Science Act. The law provides that $52.7 billion, including $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production and $11 billion research and development. It also creates a 25% investment tax credit for building chip plants, estimated to be worth $24 billion.

The centerpiece of the R&D program is the National Semiconductor Technology Center, which will conduct research and prototyping of advanced semiconductor technology.

The center is a "public private partnership that the government, industry customers, suppliers, academics, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists to come together to innovate, connect, network, solve problems and allow Americans to compete and out compete the world," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said at a White House event.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the effort was part of an "industrial strategy around chips" to preventing the loss of jobs overseas and add American jobs. "A nation that does not do R&D is a weak nation," Granholm said at the event. "We are not going to be weak anymore."

NSTC will establish an investment fund to help emerging semiconductor companies advance technologies toward commercialization.

The 2022 law also creates the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program and new Manufacturing USA institutes focused on semiconductors.

Raimondo on Monday said Commerce plans to make several major awards to fund chip manufacturing within two months. "We're in the process of really complicated, challenging negotiations with these companies," Raimondo told Reuters in an interview. She did not identify the companies. In the "next six to eight weeks, you will see several more announcements. That's what we're striving for."

The semiconductor manufacturing program is intended to subsidize chip production and related supply chain investments. The awards will help build factories and increase production.

"These are highly complex, first-of-their-kind facilities" in the U.S., Raimondo said, noting that TSMC, Samsung, Intel, are among companies that have proposed them.

"These are new-generation investments -- size, scale complexity that's never been done before in this country," Raimondo said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)

The Chip Wars are heating up, with Biden subsidies poised to make an impact after a slow first year

Dylan Sloan
Fri, February 9, 2024 


A year and a half after President Joe Biden signed the $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act into law, the U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing has actually decreased, and the government has spent less than half a percent of the money it committed to revitalizing the American microchip industry.

But the tide is turning. The Biden administration this morning announced it would direct $5 billion in CHIPS Act money toward a new training facility to boost workforce participation in a semiconductor industry dominated by foreign talent. That’s an indicator of much more to come: After a lengthy review period, the government will start giving out billions more over the coming months, primarily in the form of grants to domestic chip manufacturers such as Intel.

In any case, experts say, it’s too early to ring the alarm bells on what was always designed to be a long-term policy.

“It’s like complaining [during] the eighth month of a pregnancy that nothing has appeared yet,” said Georgetown global innovation policy professor Charles Wessner in an interview with Fortune. Wessner, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the CHIPS Act “an unprecedented program, both in its focus and its scale … I would venture that they’ve actually made great progress.”

The act aims to reverse a three-decade decline in American semiconductor manufacturing: The United States produced just 12% of the world’s chips in 2020, down from 37% in 1990. East Asian manufacturers such as Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung have emerged as leaders, with a near-complete duopoly on the advanced microprocessors that power high-consumption tech like virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

The CHIPS Act is the Biden administration’s effort to turn the tide. It committed $53 billion toward subsidizing labor force development, semiconductor R&D, and building chip factories back in August 2022. But as of last month, almost a year and a half later, the government has doled out only about $200 million in grants—0.4% of the money it’s committed. That’s largely the product of a lengthy application process requiring chipmakers to wade through months of red tape in order to secure funds.

Big-name projects have also been pushed back: TSMC announced last month that its $40 billion plant outside Phoenix would delay production a second time, potentially until 2028. And America’s share of the global semiconductor market has continued falling, with no signs of a rebound: from 12% in 2020 to a projected 9.8% in 2024, per a SEMI study.

Still, in one key way, the policy has already earned its worth: The private-sector investment the CHIPS Act has already attracted dwarfs the government’s stake.

“The chip industry is very simple,” said Wessner. “If you want to play, you have to pay—you have to provide incentives. We’re incentivizing small amounts, relatively … The good news is that $50 billion [in federal money] has already attracted $200 billion in commitments from the private sector … The federal money isn’t an incentive, it’s a catalyst. We’re not paying for the whole thing by any stretch.”

The CHIPS Act spawned similar policies worldwide. Japan, South Korea, and the EU all enacted laws promoting domestic semiconductor manufacturing last year. And China is putting a whopping $140 billion behind building its own chips as it bets hard on electric vehicles and AI.

In China, the impacts are already showing up: Nikkei reported last September that with the help of government aid, over 80% of Chinese semiconductor manufacturers increased their R&D expenses in the first half of 2023.

“Are we making progress on these? Yes. Would everyone like it to be going faster? Yes,” said Wessner. “When you have a weapons program in the Defense Department, and it doesn’t work, and it costs three times what it’s supposed to cost, we reboot and we keep working on it—because we want the weapon. You have to take the same perspective here.”

The semiconductor world was thrown for a loop yesterday when the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seeking up to $7 trillion (yes, trillion) in capital to reshape the global semiconductor supply chain and expand computing capacity to meet the demands of AI. Even if Altman secures the money—the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank have been floated as potential investors—he’ll run into the same problem the Biden administration has been dealing with: Building up semiconductor infrastructure takes time.

“There are two things that we usually criticize [the government] for,” said Wessner. “The first is that it’s taking too long. And secondly, that the grants were made too hastily. You can write that [article] in another couple months.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jury awards climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million in defamation lawsuit

SUMAN NAISHADHAM
 Thu, February 8, 2024 

Michael Mann, then-professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, arrives at the “Before the Flood” premiere on day 2 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Sept. 9, 2016, in Toronto. A jury on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, said Mann was defamed 12 years ago when a pair of conservative writers compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester. 

(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)More


WASHINGTON (AP) — A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million to climate scientist Michael Mann who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester.

Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the “hockey stick” for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet.

The work brought Mann wide exposure but also many skeptics, including the two writers Mann took to court for comments that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.

“It feels great,” Mann said Thursday after the six-person jury delivered its verdict. ”It’s a good day for us, it’s a good day for science.”

In 2012, a libertarian think tank named the Competitive Enterprise Institute published a blog post by Rand Simberg, then a fellow at the organization, that compared investigations into Mann’s work to the case of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State University who was convicted of sexually assaulting multiple children. At the time, Mann also worked at Penn State.

Mann’s research was investigated after his and other scientists’ emails were leaked in 2009 in an incident that brought further scrutiny of the “hockey stick” graph, with skeptics claiming Mann manipulated data. Investigations by Penn State and others found no misuse of data by Mann, but his work continued to draw attacks, particularly from conservatives.

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data,” Simberg wrote. Another writer, Mark Steyn, later referenced Simberg’s article in his own piece in National Review, calling Mann’s research “fraudulent.”

The jury in Superior Court of the District of Columbia found that Simberg and Steyn made false statements, awarding Mann $1 in compensatory damages from each writer. It awarded punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn, after finding that the pair made their statements with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm.”

During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1 million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face “due process scrutiny.”

Mann argued that he had lost grant funding as a result of the blog posts — an assertion for which both defendants said Mann did not provide sufficient evidence. The writers countered during the trial that Mann instead became one of the world's most well-known climate scientists in the years after their comments.

“We always said that Mann never suffered any actual injury from the statement at issue," Steyn said on Thursday through his manager. "And today, after twelve years, the jury awarded him one dollar in compensatory damages.”

Simberg's attorney Mark DeLaquil said his client was “disappointed in the verdict” and would appeal the jury's decision.

Both writers argued that they were merely stating opinions.

Lyrissa Lidsky, a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida, said it was clear the jurors found that Steyn and Simberg had “recklessly disregarded the falsity of their statements.” She added that the discrepancy between what the jury awarded in compensatory and punitive damages could result in the judge reducing the punitive damages.

Many scientists have followed Mann’s case for years as misinformation about climate change has grown on some social media platforms.

“I hope people think twice before they lie and defame scientists," said Kate Cell of Union of Concerned Scientists. Her work as senior climate campaign manager includes tracking misinformation related to climate change.

“We are so far outside the bounds of a civil conversation about facts that I hope this verdict can help us find our way back,” Cell said.

Alfred Irving, the judge presiding over the case, reminded the jury on Wednesday before they deliberated that their job was not to decide “whether there’s global warming."

Climate change continues to be a divisive and highly partisan issue in the United States. A 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 91% of Democrats believe climate change is happening, while only 52% of Republicans do.

On Thursday, Mann said he would be appealing a 2021 decision reached in D.C. Superior Court that held National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute not liable for defamation in the same incident.

“We think it was wrongly decided,” Mann said. “They're next.”

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


DC jury orders conservative commentator to pay $1M for defaming climate scientist

Thomas Catenacci
Fri, February 9, 2024 

A Washington, D.C., jury found conservative commentator Mark Steyn guilty of defaming a prominent climate scientist, ordering him to pay $1 million in punitive damages this week.

In a sprawling verdict delivered on Thursday afternoon after a multiweek trial, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia jury determined that Steyn and fellow commentator Rand Simberg defamed scientist Michael Mann, the creator of the famed "hockey stick" graph, more than a decade ago. The jury additionally ordered Simberg to pay Mann $1,000 in punitive damages, and both he and Steyn were ordered to pay just $1 each to Mann in compensatory damages.

"I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech," Mann said in a statement issued after the verdict was delivered late Thursday.

"We consider this a win for the truthful reporting of climate science matters," Mann's lawyer John Williams added in an email to Fox News Digital.

AOC DECLARES VICTORY IN FIGHT FOR GREEN NEW DEAL 5 YEARS LATER: 'SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION'

Michael Mann is seen outside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse on Feb. 5 in Washington, D.C.

The case dates back to 2012 when Mann first filed his lawsuit against Simberg and Steyn. He argued the pair of commentators defamed him in separate posts in which they compared him to Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who had recently been convicted of child molestation.

Years earlier, in 1998, Mann, who remains a University of Pennsylvania climate professor, published a study in the journal Nature showing his "hockey stick" grasp, which showed the Earth warming at a rapid pace. The graph was then used worldwide, including in subsequent United Nations climate reports, to prove that global warming was an increasing threat to humanity.

However, critics, like Steyn and Simberg, have repeatedly cast doubt on Mann's graph and underlying data.

Then, in July 2012, Simberg, then a fellow at the free market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, published a blog post making the original comparison between Mann and Sandusky.

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," Simberg wrote in the post.

Mark Steyn is seen outside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse on Feb. 5 in Washington, D.C.

Steyn published a blog post of his own in National Review three days later, referencing Simberg's article. Though, Steyn appeared to back off Simberg's original comparison in his article.

"I’m not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does, but he has a point," Steyn wrote at the time.

He further identified Mann as "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change 'hockey-stick' graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus," in reference to climate science which measures historical temperatures using tree ring analyses.

The jury on Thursday ultimately found that the two commentators' posts were defamatory, asserted or implied a provably false fact, had reckless disregard for whether their statements were false and injured Mann as a result.

A photo of the COP28 logo ahead of the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Nov. 30, 2023. The United Nations has heavily relied on Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph in its reports on climate change.

"I have no difficulty standing on the truth," Steyn said during his opening remarks at the trial last month. "The truth of what I wrote, the truth about what happened at a famous American institution, the truth about this man."

"In my world, I can write something, Mr. Simberg can write something, and Mr. Mann can write something — and you’re free to read all or none, and decide what weight to attach to all or none. But, in Mr Mann’s world, there’s his take — and everyone else has to be hockey-sticked into submission and silence," he continued. "He’s a classic example of the guy who can dish it out but can’t take it."

Melissa Howes, Steyn's manager, told Fox New Digital that the punitive damages would have to "face due process scrutiny under U.S. Supreme Court precedent." She also noted the minimal amount awarded to Mann in compensatory damages.

Mark Steyn, right, argued during the trial that his blog post regarding Michael Mann, left, was protected speech under the First Amendment.

After the verdict was reached, Amy Mitchell, who writes for Steyn's online blog, said it was a loss for the First Amendment.

"Putting aside the monetary damages, the real damage done by this case is to every American who still believes in the First Amendment," Mitchell wrote. "The precedent set today, and as alluded to by Justice Alito when the case was petitioned before the U.S. Supreme Court, means that disagreement and/or criticism of a matter of public policy — the founding principle of this country — is now in doubt. And should you choose to give voice to any dissent, you can brought before a jury, held responsible, and fined."

However, Simberg said in a statement that he was ultimately cleared of defaming Mann for "data manipulation" and highlighted the low amount of damages he was ordered to pay.

"I am pleased that the jury found in my favor on half of the statements at issue in this case, including finding my statement that Dr. Mann engaged in data manipulation was not defamation," Simberg said. "In over a decade of litigation, the sanctions levied against Dr. Mann dwarf the judgment against me."

Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows

René van Westen, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Utrecht University

Fri, February 9, 2024 

Too much fresh water from Greenland's ice sheet can slow the Atlantic Ocean's circulation. Paul Souders/Stone via Getty Images


Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?

Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium. Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a dangerous tipping point in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline, and that it could hit that tipping point again as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.

In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.

The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.

We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.

The ocean’s conveyor belt

Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides and water density differences.

In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.

How the Atlantic Ocean circulation changes as it slows. IPCC 6th Assessment Report

This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt.

Too much fresh water from melting glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet can dilute the saltiness of the water, preventing it from sinking, and weaken this ocean conveyor belt. A weaker conveyor belt transports less heat northward and also enables less heavy water to reach Greenland, which further weakens the conveyor belt’s strength. Once it reaches the tipping point, it shuts down quickly.

What happens to the climate at the tipping point?

The existence of a tipping point was first noticed in an overly simplified model of the Atlantic Ocean circulation in the early 1960s. Today’s more detailed climate models indicate a continued slowing of the conveyor belt’s strength under climate change. However, an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation appeared to be absent in these climate models.

 

This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.

We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.

The result: Dangerous cold in the North

Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.

The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent warmed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.

The annual mean temperature changes after the conveyor belt stops reflect an extreme temperature drop in northern Europe in particular. René M. van Westen

These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.

The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.

The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.

So, when will we see this tipping point?

The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.

Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.

A climate model experiment shows how quickly the AMOC slows once it reaches a tipping point with a threshold of fresh water entering the ocean. How soon that will happen remains an open question. René M. van Westen

The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.

It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: René van Westen, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Utrecht University

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Ocean heat is off the charts – here’s what that means for humans and ecosystems around the world


The heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from extreme ocean heat as corals bleach across the Caribbean


Scientists envision an ‘internet of the ocean,’ with sensors and autonomous vehicles that can explore the deep sea and monitor its vital signs

René van Westen receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC-AdG project 101055096, TAOC).

Henk A. Dijkstra receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC-AdG project 101055096, TAOC, PI: Dijkstra).

Michael Kliphuis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists

Laura Paddison, CNN
Fri, February 9, 2024 


A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others.

Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the AMOC) — of which the Gulf Stream is part — works like a giant global conveyor belt, taking warm water from the tropics toward the far North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southward.

The currents carry heat and nutrients to different areas of the globe and play a vital role in keeping the climate of large parts of the Northern Hemisphere relatively mild.

For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the circulation’s stability as climate change warms the ocean and melts ice, disrupting the balance of heat and salt that determines the currents’ strength.

While many scientists believe the AMOC will slow under climate change, and could even grind to a halt, there remains huge uncertainty over when and how fast this could happen. The AMOC has only been monitored continuously since 2004.

Scientists do know — from building a picture of the past using things like ice cores and ocean sediments — the AMOC shut down more than 12,000 years ago following rapid glacier melt.

Now they are scrambling to work out if it could happen again.

This new study provides an “important breakthrough,” said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and study co-author.

The scientists used a supercomputer to run complex climate models over a period of three months, simulating a gradual increase of freshwater to the AMOC — representing ice melt as well as rainfall and river runoff, which can dilute the ocean’s salinity and weaken the currents.

As they slowly increased the freshwater in the model, they saw the AMOC gradually weaken until it abruptly collapsed. It’s the first time a collapse has been detectable using these complex models, representing “bad news for the climate system and humanity,” the report says.

What the study doesn’t do, however, is give timeframes for a potential collapse. More research is needed, van Westen told CNN, including models which also mimic climate change impacts, such as increasing levels of planet-heating pollution, which this study did not.

“But we can at least say that we are heading in the direction of the tipping point under climate change,” van Westen said.

The impacts of the AMOC’s collapse could be catastrophic. Some parts of Europe might see temperatures plunge by up to 30 degrees Celsius over a century, the study finds, leading to a completely different climate over the course of just a decade or two.

“No realistic adaptation measures can deal with such rapid temperature changes,” the study authors write.

Countries in the Southern Hemisphere, on the other hand, could see increased warming, while the Amazon’s wet and dry seasons could flip, causing serious disruption to the ecosystem.

The AMOC’s collapse could also cause sea levels to surge by around 1 meter (3.3 feet), van Westen said.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a physical oceanographer at Potsdam University in Germany, who was not involved with the study, said it was “a major advance in AMOC stability science.”

“It confirms that the AMOC has a tipping point beyond which it breaks down if the Northern Atlantic Ocean is diluted with freshwater,” he told CNN.

Previous studies finding the AMOC’s tipping point used much simpler models, he said, giving hope to some scientists that it might not be found under more complex models.

This study crushes those hopes, Rahmstorf said.

Joel Hirschi, associate head of marine systems modeling at the National Oceanography Centre in the UK, said the study was the first to use complex climate models to show the AMOC can flip from “on” to “off” in response to relatively small amounts of freshwater entering the ocean.

But there are reasons to be cautious, he added. Even though the study used a complex model, it still has a low resolution, he said, meaning there could be limitations in representing some parts of the currents.

This study adds to the growing body of evidence that the AMOC may be approaching a tipping point — and that it could even be close.

A 2021 study found that the AMOC was weaker than any other time in the past 1,000 years. And a particularly alarming — and somewhat controversial — report published in July last year, concluded that the AMOC could be on course to collapse potentially as early as 2025.

Yet huge uncertainties remain. Jeffrey Kargel, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, said he suspected the theory of a potentially imminent shutdown of the AMOC “will remain somewhat controversial until, one year, we know that it is happening.”

He likened its potential collapse to the “wild gyrations of a stock market that precede a major crash” — it’s nearly impossible to unpick which changes are reversible, and which are a precursor to a disaster.

Modern data shows the AMOC’s strength fluctuates, but there is no observed evidence yet of a decline, Hirschi said. “Whether abrupt changes in the AMOC similar to those seen in the past will occur as our climate continues to warm is an important open question.”

This study is a piece of that puzzle, Rahmstorf said. “(It) adds significantly to the rising concern about an AMOC collapse in the not too distant future,” he said. “We will ignore this risk at our peril.”

Vital ocean currents regulating Earth’s climate ‘on course to a tipping point’

Nilima Marshall, PA Science Reporter
Fri, February 9, 2024

A large and vital system of ocean currents that helps maintain the world’s climate may already be on course to a tipping point, according to scientists.

Known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), this network of deep and surface currents help keep temperatures milder in the UK and Western Europe compared to other regions at similar latitudes – such as parts of eastern Canada as well as Siberia.

Scientists say a breakdown of this system could potentially plunge the UK and large parts of the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age – an outcome that was dramatised in the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow.

It would also disrupt rainfall that billions rely on for agriculture, cause sea levels to rise in many parts of the world and lead to changes in weather patterns with significant impacts on ecosystems and human societies.

Dr Rene van Westen, a postdoctoral researcher in climate physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said: “Cooler temperatures over Europe may seem positive, but the repercussions are far-reaching, with other regions experiencing accelerated warming and altered precipitation patterns.

“Additionally, a 100cm rise in European sea levels is projected due to the abrupt ocean circulation collapse.”

The Amoc plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate by transporting heat from the Equator towards the Poles.

But as global temperatures rise due to warming, freshwater is pouring into the system from the melting ice from Antarctica, Greenland and other sources, risking disruption to the circulation patterns that drive the Amoc.

Dr Van Westen, along with a team of researchers at Utrecht University, designed a simulation where they gradually introduced surface freshwater over the course of 2,200 model years.

The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, showed a gradual decline of the Amoc over 1700 model years, followed by an abrupt tipping event beginning around the year 1758 and lasting for about a century.

Simulations showed that during this time, the European climate cooled by about 1C per decade, with regions experiencing over 3C cooling per decade.

The researchers said that comparing these figures to the current global warming rate of 0.2C per decade underscores the devastating impact an Amoc tipping event could have on the planet.

Dr Van Westen said: “Once the Atlantic Ocean circulation collapses, the resulting climate impacts are nearly irreversible on human timescales, as our earlier research has shown.

“Staying clear of this tipping point is imperative for avoiding devastating consequences on climate, society, and the environment.”

Scientists says large parts of the Northern Hemisphere could be plunged into a new ice age (Alamy/PA)

The researchers said that while current observational records are too short to make a reliable estimation, there are early warning indicators suggesting “we are moving in the direction of the tipping point”.

The team also said it also found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of the Amoc – a minimum of freshwater transport occurring at 34 degrees south of the Equator in the Atlantic.

Commenting on the study, Professor Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at University of Exeter, said: “The research makes a convincing case that the Amoc is approaching a tipping point based on a robust, physically-based early warning indicator.

“What it cannot – and does not – say is how close the tipping point, because as it shows that there is insufficient data to make a statistically reliable estimate of that.

“We have to plan for the worst.

“We should invest in collecting relevant data and improving estimation of how close a tipping point is, improving assessment of what its impacts would be, and getting pre-prepared for how we could best manage and adapt to those impacts if they start to unfold.”

Professor Jon Robson, research fellow at the University of Reading’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, said that although climate models can simulate such abrupt Amoc weakening events, it is important to keep in mind that the current study is based on only one imperfect climate model.

He said: “We need to see if this freshwater diagnostic is really a robust early warning indicator of abrupt Amoc changes.”

Ocean system that moves heat gets closer to collapse, which could cause weather chaos, study says

SETH BORENSTEIN
Updated Fri, February 9, 2024

 People swim in the Atlantic Ocean in Biarritz, southwestern France, Oct. 27, 2021. An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before, according to a new story. 

(AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)


An abrupt shutdown of Atlantic Ocean currents that could put large parts of Europe in a deep freeze is looking a bit more likely and closer than before as a new complex computer simulation finds a “cliff-like” tipping point looming in the future.

A long-worried nightmare scenario, triggered by Greenland's ice sheet melting from global warming, still is at least decades away if not longer, but maybe not the centuries that it once seemed, a new study in Friday's Science Advances finds. The study, the first to use complex simulations and include multiple factors, uses a key measurement to track the strength of vital overall ocean circulation, which is slowing.

A collapse of the current — called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC — would change weather worldwide because it means a shutdown of one of key the climate and ocean forces of the planet. It would plunge northwestern European temperatures by 9 to 27 degrees (5 to 15 degrees Celsius) over the decades, extend Arctic ice much farther south, turn up the heat even more in the Southern Hemisphere, change global rainfall patterns and disrupt the Amazon, the study said. Other scientists said it would be a catastrophe that could cause worldwide food and water shortages.

“We are moving closer (to the collapse), but we we're not sure how much closer,” said study lead author Rene van Westen, a climate scientist and oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “We are heading towards a tipping point.”

When this global weather calamity — grossly fictionalized in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” — may happen is “the million-dollar question, which we unfortunately can't answer at the moment,” van Westen said. He said it's likely a century away but still could happen in his lifetime. He just turned 30.

“It also depends on the rate of climate change we are inducing as humanity,” van Westen said.

Studies have shown the AMOC to be slowing, but the issue is about a complete collapse or shutdown. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a group of hundreds of scientists that gives regular authoritative updates on warming, said it has medium confidence that there will not be a collapse before 2100 and generally downplayed disaster scenarios. But van Westen, several outside scientists and a study last year say that may not be right.

Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth Systems Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany, was not part of the research, but called it “a major advance in AMOC stability science.”

“The new study adds significantly to the rising concern about an AMOC collapse in the not too distant future,” Rahmstorf said in an email. “We will ignore this at our peril.”

University of Exeter climate scientist Tim Lenton, also not part of the research, said the new study makes him more concerned about a collapse.

An AMOC collapse would cause so many ripples throughout the world's climate that are “so abrupt and severe that they would be near impossible to adapt to in some locations,” Lenton said.

There are signs showing that the AMOC has collapsed in the past, but when and how it will change in the future is still uncertain, said U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer Wei Cheng, who wasn't part of the research.

The AMOC is part of an intricate global conveyor belt of ocean currents that move different levels of salt and warm water around the globe at different depths in patterns that helps regulate Earth's temperature, absorbs carbon dioxide and fuels the water cycle, according to NASA.

When the AMOC shuts down, there's less heat exchanged across the globe and “it really impacts Europe quite severely,” van Westen said.

For thousands of years, Earth's oceans have relied on a circulation system that runs like a conveyor belt. It's still going but slowing.

The engine of this conveyor belt is off the coast of Greenland, where, as more ice melts from climate change, more freshwater flows into the North Atlantic and slows everything down, van Westen said. In the current system, cold deeper fresher water heads south past both Americas and then east past Africa. Meanwhile saltier warmer ocean water, coming from the Pacific and Indian oceans, pushes past the southern tip of Africa, veers to and around Florida and continues up the U.S. East Coast on up to Greenland.

The Dutch team simulated 2,200 years of its flow, adding in what human-caused climate change does to it. They found after 1,750 years “an abrupt AMOC collapse,” but so far are unable to translate that simulated timeline to Earth's real future. Key to monitoring what happens is a complicated measurement of flow around the tip of Africa. The more negative that measurement, the slower AMOC runs.

"This value is getting more negative under climate change,” van Westen said. When it reaches a certain point it's not a gradual stop but something that is “cliff-like,” he said.

The world should pay attention to potential AMOC collapse, said Joel Hirschi, division leader at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre. But there's a bigger global priority, he said.

“To me, the rapidly increasing temperatures we have been witnessing in recent years and associated temperature extremes are of more immediate concern than the AMOC shutting down,” Hirschi said. “The warming is not hypothetical but is already happening and impacting society now.” ___

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


Oops, Scientists May Have Miscalculated Our Global Warming Timeline

Darren Orf
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Surasak Suwanmake - Getty Images

The Paris Climate Accords in 2015 set an ambitious (and necessary) goal of keeping global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temps. But a new study says we might’ve blown past that threshold several years ago.

A new study from University Western Australia Oceans Institute studied long-lived Caribbean sclerosponges and created an ocean temperature timeline dating back to the 1700s.

While the study claims that we surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2020, other scientists question if data from just one part of the world is enough to capture the immense thermal complexity of our oceans.

Whatever your stance is on climate change (it’s real, let’s move on), it’s impossible to have missed the near-ubiquitous call to action to “keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.” Over the past few years, the somewhat bureaucratic phrase has become a rallying cry for the climate conscious.

This ambitious target first surfaced following the Paris Climate Agreement, and describes a sort of climate threshold—if we pass a long-term average increase in temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and hold at those levels for several years, we’re going to do some serious damage to ourselves and our environment.

Well, a new paper from the University Western Australia Oceans Institute has some bad news: the world might’ve blown past that threshold four years ago. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the paper reaches this conclusion via an unlikely route—analyzing six sclerosponges, a kind of sea sponge that clings to underwater caves in the ocean. These sponges are commonly studied by climate scientists and are referred to as “natural archives” because they grow so slowly. Like, a-fraction-of-a-millimeter-a-year slow. This essentially allows them to lock away climate data in their limestone skeletons, not entirely unlike tree rings or ice cores.

By analyzing strontium to calcium ratios in these sponges, the team could effectively calculate water temperatures dating back to 1700. The sponges watery home in the Caribbean is also a plus, as major ocean currents don’t muck up or distort temperature readings. This data could be particularly useful,as direct human measurement of sea temperature only dates back to roughly 1850, when sailors dipped buckets into the ocean. That”s why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses 1850 and 1900 as its preindustrial baseline, according to the website Grist.

“The big picture is that the global warming clock for emissions reductions to minimize the risk of dangerous climate change has been brought forward by at least a decade,” Malcolm McCulloch, lead author of the study, told the Associated Press. “Basically, time’s running out.”

The study concludes that the world started warming roughly 80 years before the IPCC’s estimates, and that we already surpassed 1.7 degrees Celsius in 2020. That’s a big “woah, if true” moment, but some scientists are skeptical. One such scientist, speaking with LiveScience, said that “ it begs credulity to claim that the instrumental record is wrong based on paleosponges from one region of the world… It honestly doesn’t make any sense to me.” Other experts expressed wanting to see more data before completely upending the IPCC’s climate goalposts, which say the Earth is currently hovering at a long-term temperature change of around 1.2 degrees Celsius.

Unfortunately, even if the sponges are wrong, there’s mounting evidence that we are in the process of crossing that 1.5 degree threshold as we speak. This January was the hottest on record, clocking in at 1.7 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. According to New Scientist, that means we’ve been above 1.5 degrees of change for at least a year. That doesn’t jump the long-term average over the 1.5-line, but it’s certainly a sign we’re getting close fast.

Regardless of the percentage, one thing is certain—climate change is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. In order to save the planet for future habitability, humans need to curtail emissions immediately—after all, the sea sponges are telling us so.

Climate change row as British scientists claim ‘Day After Tomorrow’ modelling is wrong

Sarah Knapton

THE TORY TELEGRAPH
Fri, February 9, 2024 

In the film The Day After Tomorrow, the ocean system is disrupted by climate change, plunging the northern hemisphere into a permanent winter

 - 20th CENTURY FOX/EPA


A climate model predicting a devastating ‘Day After Tomorrow’ collapse of ocean systems has been criticised for relying on ‘entirely unrealistic’ scenarios.

A Dutch team from Utrecht University published work in the journal of Science Advances this week suggesting that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could reach a tipping point, triggering a new ice age.

The AMOC transports heat and salt throughout the world’s oceans and helps regulate the global climate, driving the Gulf Stream that keeps Britain warmer than it should be for its northerly latitude.

In the apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow, the ocean system is disrupted by climate change, plunging the northern hemisphere into a permanent winter.

Although ice-core data suggests the AMOC can switch off, recent sophisticated modelling has not been able to reproduce the effect, leading many scientists to think a collapse is unlikely to happen.

The new study claims to have shown that AMOC is “on route to tipping”, a prospect that the authors say is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”.

However British scientists warned that the outcome had been “forced” by using unlikely variables, such as assuming large influxes of freshwater into the Atlantic.

Prof Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre at Bristol University, said: “They did this by imposing a huge freshwater forcing to the North Atlantic that is entirely unrealistic for even the most extreme warming scenario over the next century.

“Their freshwater forcing applied to the North Atlantic is equivalent to six cm/year of sea level rise by the end of the experiment, which is more than seen during the collapse of the ice sheet that covered North America during the last glaciation.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that the AMOC is unlikely to collapse this century, and many scientists do not believe it will fail even if the climate continues to warm.

Observational data for the ocean system only goes back to 2004, making it difficult to predict, and because it spans the globe, most models cannot account for all the nuances and influences.

Commenting on the new research, Prof Andrew Watson, of Exeter University, said “They say it suggests that ‘the present day AMOC is on route to tipping’.
‘Push it quite hard’

“This sounds alarming, but it’s important to note that this is not the same as saying collapse is going to happen imminently. They have to run their model for a long time (1,700 years) and push it quite hard to make the collapse happen.

“Models are not reality. The real system may be more, or less, prone to collapse than this model suggests.”

The authors said that the collapse of the AMOC would result in the “very strong and rapid cooling of Europe” by about 3C per decade, which they said ‘no realistic adaptation measures’ would be able to mitigate.

They said their study had picked up an early warning signal that the collapse was just 25 years away, when the movement of freshwater flowing through the southern Atlantic slows to a minimum.

Other experts said the research was a reminder of the possible unexpected impacts of uncontrollable global warming, which could actually plunge the world into a new ice age.

Prof Jeffrey Kargel, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, said: “A shut down of the AMOC would be felt globally, according to the model, from Europe to Antarctica.
‘Sea ice has diminished drastically’

“Sea ice in the Arctic, which has diminished drastically in recent decades, would expand in winter to the latitudes of Ireland, the UK and Denmark.

“The projected changes in climate in Scandinavia and parts of Greenland and the United Kingdom and elsewhere may threaten those countries’ humanly habitability if glacier and ice sheet growth extends from the mountains and hill terrains to lowlands.”

Last year a paper published in the journal Nature suggested the AMOC was likely to collapse by 2057, and possibly as early as 2025.

But the study was criticised as “far too simplistic” by the Met Office, which warned readers not to despair.

 

Kick-off for a new polar research project

YESSS to investigate warming in the Arctic during the dark season

Business Announcement

ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH

 

IMAGE: 

DR CLARA HOPPE (RIGHT) SAMPLING ON KONGSFJORD, SPITSBERGEN

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CREDIT: ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE / PAOLO VERZONE

The new research project YESSS - Year-round EcoSystem Study on Svalbard - is focussing on how Arctic warming is changing over the seasons in Svalbard. The team of around 30 scientists observes the life cycles, foraging and overwintering strategies of selected key species all year round and conducts experiments at the AWIPEV station on Svalbard. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project, which is coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, with 2.7 million euros until the end of 2026.

The Arctic is warming more quickly than any other place on Earth. The melting glaciers and dwindling sea ice there have become an iconic image of climate change. But also the entire seasonal development of plants and animals is changing, possibly with serious ecological consequences.

Researchers from seven universities and research institutions met at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven from 6-8 February 2024 for the kick-off meeting for the 40-month polar research project YESSS. Under the leadership of the AWI, they want to investigate the seasonal aspects of warming in the Arctic, e.g. with respect to life cycles, foraging and overwintering. Until now, little is known about this because our understanding of such ecological processes has mainly been based on studies carried out in spring and summer. This is now set to change: YESSS stands for “Year-round EcoSystem Study on Svalbard”, so it is about year-round research being conducted on the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. As part of the German government’s polar strategy, the Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) is funding the project with around 2.7 million euros.

When it comes to climate change, the Arctic is considered a hotspot, a kind of early warning system for impending global changes. This is due to the fact that the effects of climate change are intensified under the extreme conditions in the Arctic Ocean region. Ocean temperature has risen twice as fast as in other regions of the world. This matters because ocean warming is a stress factor for many organisms: Higher temperatures accelerate processes in the body and thus lead to greater consumption of resources. What consequences does this have for phenology in the Arctic?

“So far, there have been hardly any studies on these developments in the long and dark Arctic winter and also not in the transitional periods in spring and autumn, which are only a few days long. We now want to gain new insights with weekly measurements throughout the year,” says YESSS project leader Dr Clara Hoppe. The AWI biologist has been involved in several research expeditions to Svalbard since 2014 and also in the year-round MOSAiC expedition 2019/2020 in the Central Arctic.

Her special field of research is phytoplankton, microscopically small single-celled organisms that bind the greenhouse gas CO2 through photosynthesis and produce oxygen from water. Phytoplankton is the basis of the food web, so that changes in phytoplankton have an impact on the entire ecosystem. “We want to investigate how these organisms react to the stressor of increased water temperature during the dark months,” says Clara Hoppe.

Such season-specific experiments on temperature sensitivity will also be carried out for other key groups in the food web, for macroalgae (e.g. seaweed), molluscs (e.g. mussels), echinoderms (e.g. sea urchins) and fish (e.g. cod). The higher water temperatures are for example already attracting fish species that did not previously exist in the Arctic. Whether native species will be sufficiently resistant is largely unknown. Based on the data obtained on resilience to higher temperatures and successful overwintering strategies, the scientists will develop an ecosystem model. It is intended to identify potential “winners” and “losers” of climate change as well as temperature tipping points at different times of the year. “When linked together, these different research findings can help to assess the ecological consequences of climate change in the Arctic,” says Clara Hoppe. The YESSS project aims to develop strategic guidelines for the sustainable socio-ecological management of similar Arctic coastal ecosystems and make them available to various interest groups (e.g. indigenous and local communities or countries bordering the Arctic Ocean, as well as politicians).

The development of these governance concepts and the entire communication of the research project, including to the general public, are summarised in a separate work package of YESSS. Experts from the Ecologic Institute and the NGO constructify.media e.V. will support the scientists - a special approach that also convinced the BMBF when selecting the project.

Following a preparatory phase since September 2023 and the kick-off meeting in Bremerhaven, the actual research work in the Kongsfjord on Svalbard is scheduled to begin in summer 2024. Only around 30 people live in Ny-Ålesund, where the AWIPEV research station is located, in winter. For one year, four doctoral students will also work there for the YESSS research project, in groups of two, alternating every six weeks. They will take weekly samples on site and provide measurement results for the project in various experiments. They will be prepared for their new job far north of the Arctic Circle in various training sessions at the AWI and GEOMAR in Kiel, including protection in the event of encounters with polar bears, boat-based sampling at night and a two-day media training programme. This is because the team will regularly report on their extraordinary work in climate research on social media and attempting to appeal to a young audience. At the end of 2026, the project results will be available and presented at the largest annual Arctic conference, the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland, among other events.

 

YESSS partners:
1 Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven
2 University of Bremen, Faculty of Biology/Chemistry & MARUM - Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences, Bremen
3 Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Department 10 Biology, Institute of Molecular Physiology, Mainz
4 University of Hamburg - Institute of Marine Ecosystem and Fisheries Sciences, Centre for Earth System Research and Sustainability, Hamburg
5 University of Constance, Limnological Institute, Constance
6 Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Zoological Institute, Kiel
7 GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel