Turns Out, the Atlantic Ocean Is Going off Balance — and It May Seriously Impact Life on Our Planet

Currently, planet Earth is going through a frightening experience. Much like the network of veins that distribute blood and nutrients across the entire human body, Earth is underlain with a network of vein-like channels called AMOC that acts as a central heating system of the planet. Provoked by reckless human activity, as the Earth's ice sheets are melting rapidly and sea levels are rising, this AMOC stands at the mercy of humans. AMOC, the system that has cradled life in its warm embrace for centuries, is now wobbling, as the National Oceanography Center (NOC) described.

If Earth were looked upon as a giant blue office building, AMOC would be the centralized heating system, with pipes and ducts running through the building. AMOC, short for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is whittled across the S-shaped stretch of the Atlantic Ocean where warm waters from the Northern equator meet the cooler waters of the South, creating a swift trajectory of currents that rush towards the southern coast of the US, along the teeth of the Gulf Stream. According to NOC, the heat transfer system is the conveyor belt of Earth, without which much of the planet’s life would perish and cease to exist. 

Every living organism needs a certain amount of heat, carbon footprint, and oxygen to survive, grow, and thrive. And this huge loop of interconnected water channels distributes as much as 1.2 petawatts of heat, per NOC. This heat is equal to 1 million power stations put together. The currents of AMOC aren’t quite like the surface currents people see on the beach. “Tidal currents occur close to shore and are influenced by the sun and moon,” explained the NOAA, and “surface currents are influenced by the wind.” These are much slower currents emanating from the surface to the seafloor, driven by changes in the saltiness and ocean temperature, a process called “thermohaline circulation.”

Deflection and disruption of these currents are mainly triggered by Earth’s rotation, coupled with the hindrances in current flow as well as human activities. As a consequence of these factors, the state of AMOC today is like “witnessing the degradation of our natural world in real time,” as one scientist said in a PBS Terra documentary. It’s not for sure to say that AMOC is going to collapse in the next few years, but even one little disruption in its loop could prompt a humanitarian catastrophe, which could disrupt the planet’s entire life system.

Without the essentials like heat energy and carbon, life on the planet could start suffering, ultimately dying a brutal death. In effect, the upsetting of AMOC could interfere with the monsoon in Amazonia, India, and Africa, furthermore disorientating the climate in Russia and Europe. Another negative effect would be rapidly rising sea levels. In the North Atlantic, one of the most studied areas of the world, scientists have been noticing a “robust weakening of AMOC,” per PBS Terra. They studied factors like eddies of currents, overflows, deep current circulations, and underwater ridges to conclude this.

The current status of AMOC is like “telling someone who boards a plane that it has a 5 percent probability of crashing.” The greatest triggers are melting Arctic sea ice and thawing Greenland ice sheets, as Dr. Zoe Jacob said in a podcast by NOC. As climate change unleashes a battle upon the blue planet, throwing its veins and organs off balance, life itself is left in the mercy of what motivations spur within the minds of humans. Whether they’ll protect it or destroy it, only they can decide. “The warmer it gets, the worse it will get.”

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