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Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

I wish other countries would take it this seriously.

Somewhat ironically, Iceland might be the country best suited by nature to handle the cold that would descend upon the Nordics if the gulf stream collapsed. At least they have plenty of volcanic heat they can use. My home country Sweden is not so lucky. Sure it's located a fair bit further south, but it's not clear that'll be enough to escape the cold. Yet the Swedish government seems wholly oblivious. Even the opposition is silent on this issue.

Kudos to the Icelandic! I wish you well in this endeavour!

Feel like I should mention the other end of this problem too: if the gulf stream stops heating the Nordics, it also stops bringing cold water from the Arctic to the gulf of Mexico. The heat waves will be absolutely epic. The Caribbeans, Florida and Mexico ought to be more worried too. In my armchair opinion, this will go way beyond nice beach days.

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See [amocscenarios.org](https://amocscenarios.org/) for various modeled scenarios on what the future could look like with a collapsed AMOC.

Sweden, Finland, Norway would not be hit too badly. Summers will still be warmer, but shorter. Winters longer but about as cold.

The worst effects will be for the UK and specifically Scotland. Their climate wil change to look more like Finlands or Swedens. I.e. proper winters with pretty deep cold spells. This will be a complete disaster as buildings and general infrastrucure will not be able to handle it. There'll be massive issues from frost heave, buildings that are not insulated enough, heating systems specced too small to properly heat houses and so forth.

An AMOC collapse will be very bad, but not quite the Day Afer Tomorrow as some think it would be.

> The worst effects will be for the UK and specifically Scotland

On the cooling side. The worst general effects will hit the Caribbean, Africa, India and Southeast Asia.

(Also the northern Rockies will get slightly better ski seasons?)

Has that site been /slashdotted by HN? It's really buggy for me.

The main factor reducing gulf stream is increase of fresh water runoff into Arctic ocean. So maybe we should invest into building Sibaral Canal diverting some of the water of northern rivers towards Aral sea, and by that saving both Nordic and Central Asian countries.

Beyond Florida, the entire east coast of the US will become not just drastically warmer if the AMOC collapses, but will experience dramatic local sea level rise (warm water is more voluminous than cold water). Think Boston with the climate of modern-day Alabama.

Both the recent Acapulco and Jamaica hurricanes had non-normal intensification as they hit the warn coastal waters. I wonder how devastating this is going to be to Florida and the Atlantic states. Every time there is a hurricane it hits the Cat 5 physical limit.

Fort Lauderdale and Miami are underwater several times a year as is. The seawall at Daytona is gone.

It is going to be destabilizing. As long as it doesn't affect the corn growing in Iowa.

We're also well set up where a majority of the population is in just one city, meaning it would be pretty easy to do some centralized building. Swedish population is far more spread out than Iceland is

Europe will be thrown into chaos if the AMOC actually fully collapses. Minimum temperatures in the north and west dropping twenty degrees celcius will wreak havoc on harvests, put pressure on trade relations, and will probably drain several large cities. No doubt one asshole biding their time will take the chance to start a war in Europe amidst the chaos.

From what I've read, a full collapse is unlikely, though. Plus, preventing this from happening requires a concentrated worldwide effort, which seems unlikely with the leader of the leading greenhouse gas emission source per capita having gone on record saying climate change is a Chinese conspiracy.

At this point, I think a lot of governments are just hoping the best case scenario is right, because there's hardly anything we can do if the AMOC does indeed start collapsing fully, other than southbound mass emigration.

We just need to drop all the emission policies so the temps go up /s

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