{"id":551254,"date":"2026-07-15T16:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/551254\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T16:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:39:15","slug":"pacific-ocean-meltwater-poses-unexpected-threat-to-amoc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/551254\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacific Ocean meltwater poses unexpected threat to AMOC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melting icebergs from the North Pacific Ocean can weaken a massive ocean current system in the Atlantic, according to a groundbreaking study from the University of California, Davis. The discovery completely upends a long-standing climate framework and warns that modern climate models may be looking in the wrong ocean to predict future current collapses.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) acts as the planet\u2019s engine, transporting warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic to regulate global temperatures. For decades, scientists believed that during Earth\u2019s last ice age, icebergs breaking off into the North Atlantic itself were the primary triggers that slowed this \u201cconveyor belt,\u201d which drastically cooled the Northern Hemisphere into icy periods known as Heinrich stadials.<\/p>\n

However, the new research, published in Nature Communications, reveals these North Atlantic melting events actually occurred after the AMOC had already begun to weaken.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the iceberg discharge events in the North Atlantic could not have driven the initial AMOC weakening,\u201d said lead author Chijun Sun, an assistant professor at UC Davis.<\/p>\n

Using advanced supercomputer simulations to recreate Earth\u2019s climate from 19,000 years ago, Sun\u2019s team found that the slowing of the AMOC was instead likely caused by iceberg activity in the northeastern Pacific.<\/p>\n

The simulations showed that massive \u201ciceberg discharge events\u201d \u2013 or calving\u00a0\u2013 in the northeastern Pacific released enormous volumes of freshwater. This freshwater travelled across the globe to the North Atlantic\u2019s deepwater formation zones. Because freshwater is less dense than saltwater, it diluted the Atlantic\u2019s salty waters, preventing them from sinking and effectively stalling the AMOC engine.<\/p>\n

The resulting subsurface warming in the Atlantic then triggered a secondary chain reaction, causing North Atlantic ice sheets to melt and further weaken the system.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melting icebergs from the North Pacific Ocean can weaken a massive ocean current system in the Atlantic, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-551254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}