So, the AMOC. You've heard of it? The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, which flows south to north along the North American coastline, transports heat from lower to higher latitudes and basically keeps northeast N. America and western Europe from freezing to death every winter and ensures that parts of western Africa get enough rainfall.
I bring it up because I want to talk about how media cover science and climate change.
First, AMOC isn't easy to measure. You'd need heat sensors in the ocean along thousands of miles, and we've only had something approximating that since about 2004. So scientists use measurement proxies like air temperature records to model its behavior. A lot of climate science works like this.
For a while, over the past 2 - 3 years or so, there have been a spate of articles based on a few studies reporting that their models showed the AMOC slowing down already, and that this boded ill for the potential for climate disasters for the various regions affected by it.
Then, a few weeks ago, another study was released, using a different model, which showed that the AMOC may not have slowed down at all. Yet.
Naturally this inspired another spate of articles, this time with titles like "Key Atlantic Ocean Current Remains Stable, Defying Previous Concerns" or "New Study Finds That Critical Ocean Current Has Not Declined in the Last 60 Years."
Yet, the study authors didn't say that their findings defied previous concerns. They believe that the AMOC will weaken and probably collapse during this century. They just had a model that showed it hadn't weakened yet.
We're desperate for good news, and the AMOC weakening slowly instead of quickly is good news because it gives us more time to slow down emissions etc. I'm just highlighting the whole process, and the media bias towards normalcy/unwarranted positivity (at least when it comes to #ClimateChange). Anyway, here's a good article explaining how and why the models ended up differing, and why the back-and-forth doesn't mean much ultimately. Good news is fine, but this... was not good news, just an anomalous finding that was treated that way by journalists.
#Climate #AMOC #ClimateDiary #science #SciComm #ScienceCommunication