Overview
- Iceland’s climate minister said the AMOC threat was formally presented to the National Security Council as a potential existential risk, triggering interministerial planning and a disaster-preparedness policy.
- Government assessments are focusing on energy and food security, infrastructure resilience and international transport while other Nordic and UK-Irish agencies expand research and brief policymakers.
- A peer-reviewed study in Communications Earth & Environment identifies a subsurface temperature fingerprint in the equatorial Atlantic that the authors say can monitor AMOC change and suggests decades-scale collapse risk depends on future emissions.
- A new Ocean Modelling paper by Fraser Goldsworth argues common ‘hosing’ experiments are unrealistic, showing that the season, location and source of freshwater strongly affect how much reaches and influences the AMOC.
- Scientists warn that a major slowdown or collapse could chill Northern Europe, disrupt tropical rainfall relied on in Africa, India and South America and contribute to faster Antarctic warming and higher regional sea levels.