I just realized this has already been posted.
My mistake.
I looked at the paper the article was written about. I’m confused why the authors did not claim the SMOC reversed in the paper.
Here, we show that since 2015, these conditions have reversed: Surface salinity in the polar Southern Ocean has increased, upper-ocean stratification has weakened, sea ice has reached multiple record lows, and open-ocean polynyas have reemerged.
They don’t say anything about reversed circulation. Why?
“[…] this process could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries”
It’s fucked
That’s bad
Yes. It seems to have turned a part of the ocean which acted as a carbon sink into a carbon source. They don’t mention gigatonnes, but I would guess: a few (that’s a lot).
I think it said atmospheric CO2 will double as a result
Lmao we’re so fucked yall, I keep saying…
The image caption does say “could double”, but the PNAS article doesn’t mention that. As far as I understand, the role of the Southern Ocean as a whole as a carbon sink is big (two-digit percentage of human-caused emissions). But the effect subdivides into biological (phytoplankton) and physical (currents downwelling CO2-rich water and upwelling CO2-poor water). And I’m not aware or capable of pointing out a balance sheet of how much each component does.
That’s fair
That’s a plot device in The Day After Tomorrow movie. So the idiocracy won’t accept it because it was in a movie about climate change.
I can already hear the “nice try, liberal but…”
