ocean current conveyor belt system

Image by Celsias blog

One of the worst environmental disasters of the last century was the Sahel Drought. A million people were directly killed by the drought that lasted a dozen years, from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, and 50 million more were adversely affected in several countries in a wide swathe of sub-Saharan Africa.

The sudden shift in climate that brought this disaster about has come to be known as ‘Abrupt Climate Change’, a phenomenon that has been attracting the attention of scientists and world leaders along with the development of global warming science - as the latter exacerbates the former. A scientifically challenged version of this phenomenon was recently ‘Hollywood-ised’ in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, where a sudden shift in ocean current temperatures brought an instant ice-age upon the northern regions of the planet.

Hollywood aside, where many think of Global Warming as a gradual, almost imperceptible adjustment in temperature, the phenomenon is expected to increase the frequency and severity of regionalised abrupt climate change events.

Scientists looking at this issue have just put out a report, apparently the first of its kind, that indicates abrupt climate change events are a lot more common than initially believed. More from Celsias...