oceanthrowaway

I’m maybe overly cautious about my online footprint. I understand your skepticism and think it’s well placed. For what it’s worth I don’t see my comment as FUD and would wager that the authors of the study would agree with my comment. I enjoyed their study and was just trying to provide additional context (see also the link in my edit).

You are totally right that my comment is worth significantly less than a peer reviewed study.

Thank you for your kind tone (genuinely). I understand your concern. I certainly hope it does not become a debate about scientific trust for hours although you are right its headed that way. I have a great amount of trust in the scientific consensus, am a publishing climate scientist myself, and did genuinely enjoy this paper. It is my opinion that is instructive for people to know that studies on AMOC collapse are often misinterpreted when they are spread widely, similar maybe to headlines about experimental new battery designs. I do not think that the authors of the study have any ill intent or that their work is unimportant, but rather that AMOC collapse is an incredibly complex topic and that when studies on it are often posted to sites like hacker news (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28085342 I have been here a decade just not on this throwaway ;) ) they are often taken as a significant change in the understanding of the field which they are not (yet at least).

I see your point that harping on this fact is perhaps boring and repetitive so I apologize for that.

I think if you read the full IPCC report you will see they are far from dramatic. Often news articles on the reports include calls to action (which I am all for given the path we are on). I believe the IPCC may also issue a statement about the report as a whole on release. However, if you read subsections of the full report you will see each domain specialist assign low medium or high confidence to each potential climate outcome. They also include useful descriptions of the physical mechanisms behind many climate phenomenon

To me this is the great utility of the IPCC reports. If you look at the full report you can find subsections on many aspects of climate change and a discussion of the state of the field complete with citations compiled by an expert.

You are completely correct I regret that word choice now. I was rushing to comment because I felt it was important to provide context on AMOC collapse scholarship.

No I am just noting that the AMOC bistability literature is decades long.

I’m a physical oceanographer. While I have only skimmed this article I would like to make two quick comments.

1) The AMOC is one of the most studied parts of the world ocean and predictions about its collapse have been made since Stommel in 1961. I think in general any study on its imminent collapse should be taken with a grain of salt and it would be wise to wait for further replication and the consensus of the community. You can google AMOC collapse and find articles stretching back decades.

2) This may be my bias a dynamacist but I am skeptical of purely statistical models of AMOC collapse. The AMOC is complex and trying to predict the time of a complete collapse is a significant simplification (especially when, as the authors note, a slowdown rather than shutdown of the AMOC seems more likely from our current understanding).

Nevertheless this is a very interesting study and contribution to the field.

Edit: @abathur posted a wonderful link below that I wanted to spread further: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-paper-...