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SOURCE: Stefan Rahmstorf and Earth 101

DATE: July 1, 2016

SNIP: We know from Earth’s history that this ocean circulation system in the North Atlantic has been quite unstable. There have been abrupt changes leading to abrupt climate changes in the North Atlantic region leading to affect the region and the whole world. Will global warming that human activities are causing now affect that circulation system once again?

The models predicted [a slowdown in the circulation system] but we find that the cooling that we actually observe in the North Atlantic is somewhat larger than the models have predicted, so we can say the climate models have been predicting the right thing, but they have been under-predicting it, the real changes are occurring faster than what we have expected.