Future response of the AMOC to anthropogenic global warming

Determine how the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation responds to anthropogenic global warming by characterizing its evolution under realistic greenhouse-gas forcing trajectories and assessing whether it weakens, collapses, or remains stable over the coming decades and century.

Background

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major climate component and a proposed tipping element whose potential decline or collapse would entail severe global impacts. While climate models generally project a decline under future emissions scenarios, the magnitude is model-dependent and direct observational records are short and noisy. The authors emphasize that early-warning indicators based on critical slowing-down may fail under non-autonomous forcing conditions, underscoring the need for a global dynamical perspective beyond local stability analysis.

This open question frames the paper’s investigation of edge states and boundary crises in an intermediate-complexity coupled climate model to interpret ensemble splitting and long transients under time-dependent CO2 forcing.