US to witness extreme winters due to changing ocean currents and climate change: Study

Raising concerns about the melting of ice caps, a new research conducted by a pair of scientists has revealed that the changing ocean currents are driving extreme winters in the northern hemisphere, especially in the US. As per ANI, the scientist duo studied the Atlantic portion of a worldwide conveyor belt known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC to arrive at the conclusion. It is has been found that there runs a conveyor belt of water throughout the Earth’s oceans which regulates climate patterns all over the world and is powered by variations in the water’s temperature and saltiness.

Climate change will further trigger extreme winters, says study

Led by Jianjun Yin, the University of Arizona Department of Geosciences and co-authored by Ming Zhao from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the study has been published in the journal ‘Communications Earth and Environment’. It found that the winters in the US critically depend on this conveyor belt-like system which is likely to turn more extreme as the AMOC slows due to local weather change.

Explaining the mechanism of the AMOC, the study revealed that the phenomenon occurs when warm water moves north into the upper Atlantic Ocean and releases heat into the atmosphere at higher latitudes. Now as the water transferred all the heat to the north, it then becomes denser by turning cold, sinks deep into the ocean and flows back south. 

Weighing in on the phenomenon carrying huge amounts of water northward, Yin explained in terms of power, saying that, "the magnitude is on the order of 1 petawatt, or 10 to 15 power watts. Right now, the energy consumption by the entire world is about 20 terawatts or 10 to 12 power watts. Therefore, 1 petawatt is enough to run about 50 civilizations.”

The study went on to reveal that melting of Greenland's ice sheets will flush more freshwater into the ocean and as a result of water heating and refreshing, the density and shrinking of surface water will reduce. It is this process that will slow down the AMOC and cause extreme winters in the US. As per Yin, the daily temperatures dropped to 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in Houston and recent observational studies have shown that the AMOC has weakened over the past decades due to the high emission of greenhouse gases. 

Although, Yin stated that there is uncertainty about the magnitude of AMOC's weakening as the scientists don't know how much of the Greenland ice sheet will melt.

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