For several  years, climate scientists have shown that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could come to a halt if the world warms too much. New research by researchers from Utrecht University shows that this picture is incomplete: the pace of warming also determines whether the AMOC stays stable. The study was published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

In the Arctic, the weather plays a key role in determining how much ice covers the ocean. One weather phenomenon that has a significant influence on this is Arctic cyclones: they cause unusually warm and stormy conditions, which typically lead to a significant loss of ice. These conditions last for a particularly long time when several cyclones rapidly follow one another. An international research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now, for the first time, systematically investigated the effects of these accumulating cyclones, using weather data from recent decades. In the journal Nature Communications, they have described this ‘cyclone clustering’ and its specific consequences for the future of sea ice and, by extension, the Arctic coastline.

 A research team led by Dr. Kang Daehyun at the Center for Climate and Carbon Cycle Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST; President Oh Sang-rok) announced that it has developed KIST-Ocean, an AI-based global ocean prediction model, to overcome these limitations. This achievement is the result of the KIST Climate and Environment Research Institute, which was established to predict and respond to climate change through science and technology. It is significant in that it has successfully integrated AI technology into the field of long-term ocean and climate forecasting-which requires vast amounts of observational data and physics-based analysis capabilities-thereby achieving both high accuracy and computational efficiency.

Joint press release from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

In a nutshell:

 Applied to a single rhodolith from the central Red Sea: The method reconstructed 133 days of temperature closely matching on-site measurements.

Preserved in the skeleton: The ratio of chemical elements in the growth layers reveals daily seawater temperatures

New method solves previous analysis problem: Growth measurements, 3D X-ray imaging, and data alignment merge the data from multiple algal branches into a single, continuous timeline.