Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Evidence lacking for a pending collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Nature Climate Change volume 14, pages 40–42 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 30 November 2023

The Original Article was published on 05 August 2021

arising from N. Boers Nature Climate Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01097-4 (2021)

A catastrophic collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will have serious impacts on global climate. On the basis of eight AMOC proxies across the Atlantic Basin, Boers1 claimed to have found early warning signals (EWS) that point to its imminent collapse. Here we show common to all eight of Boers’ AMOC proxies are artificial rises in variance as observational coverage increased, giving false alarms; we demonstrate how climate models without EWS could be made to yield apparent EWS of a tipping point when sampled according to the increasing historical observational coverage. In addition, Boers’ salinity proxy was based on our work2; this and another of his subpolar AMOC proxies have their signs reversed erroneously. The narrative that the AMOC is declining towards collapse cannot be supported when the sign is corrected.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Apparent EWS arise as observational coverage improves.
Fig. 2: Subsampling model and EN4 data.

References

  1. Boers, N. Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nat. Clim. Change 11, 680–688 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Chen, X. & Tung, K. K. Global surface warming enhanced by weak Atlantic Overturning Circulation. Nature 559, 387–391 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Scheffer, M. et al. Early-warning signals for critical transitions. Nature 461, 53–59 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Good, S. A., Martin, M. J. & Rayner, N. A. EN4: quality controlled ocean temperature and salinity profiles and monthly objective analyses with uncertainty estimates. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans 118, 6704–6716 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Srokosz, M. A. & Bryden, H. L. Observing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation yields a decade of inevitable surprises. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1255575 (2015).

  6. Willis, J. K. Can in situ floats and satellite altimeters detect long-term change in Atlantic Ocean overturning? Geophys. Res. Lett. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL042372 (2010).

  7. Zhu, C. & Liu, Z. Weakening Atlantic overturning circulation causes South Atlantic salinity pile-up. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 998–1003 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Caesar, L., Rahmstorf, S., Robinson, A., Feulner, G. & Saba, V. Observed fingerprint of a weakening Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation. Nature 556, 191–196 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. He, C. et al. A North Atlantic warming hole without ocean circulation. Geophys. Res. Lett. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL100420 (2022).

  10. Rahmstorf, S. et al. Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 475–480 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Wu, Z., Huang, N. E., Long, S. R. & Peng, C. K. On the trend, detrending and variability of nonlinear and non-stationary time series. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 14889–14894 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

X.C. was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 41825012.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Frontier Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System and Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Xianyao Chen

  2. Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

    Xianyao Chen

  3. Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Ka-Kit Tung

Authors
  1. Xianyao Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ka-Kit Tung
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

X.C. and K.-K.T. jointly conceived and designed the experiments. X.C. developed the tools for their analyses and performed all experiments. X.C. and K.-K.T. jointly analysed the results. K.-K.T. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ka-Kit Tung.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Climate Change thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Chen, X., Tung, KK. Evidence lacking for a pending collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 40–42 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01877-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01877-0

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing