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While most of the planet warms, a patch of ocean south of Greenland—often called the “cold blob” or “North Atlantic warming hole”—is not warming. In fact, depending on which years you look at, it has actually cooled since industrialization. In this video we investigate this odd phenomenon which has implications for the future of our climate and the stability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is a system of currents that transports heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic, regulating weather patterns across Northwestern Europe and beyond. However, recent evidence suggests this vital system may be weakening. Could human-induced climate change, specifically the warming of the ocean and the influx of freshwater from melting ice, be pushing this circulation toward a tipping point? We take a journey through centuries of oceanographic discovery to understand the overturning circulation, the urgency of research on the AMOC, and what the potential collapse of this system could mean for the stable world we built our civilizations on.

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Bev Fong

Sean Barrett

Jon Hewett

Albychen

avaren

Evan Hass

Mark Tinker

L.A. O’Connor

Marcos Huerta

Joaquim Salles

Sam Gaty

Edgar Sutawika

Tim Davey

Navneet

Pedro ZM

Martin Weeks

Dimi

Bryce Golden-Chen

Estelle Caswell

Gregory Laborde

Yash Murthy

Matthew Stvartak

Garret Wates

Slightly Suspicious Mind

Kellyn Lorentzen-Goler

omg.science

Duncan Stannett

Keith England

Jocelyn Tabancay Duffy

Casey Schatz

Mark McCreary

Jonathan McCabe

Branden Ushjima

Dr Esh | Second Opinion

Wookiee Henderson

Byung-Cheol Cho

Frances Haugen

Gilbo Jiménez

Roy Lara

Melanie Halley

Dmitry

Archie Stonehill

Ed Martini

Jose Zaragoza Jr

Jamieson Urquhart

Nate Hingst

Jay McZara

Scott Heimendinger

Thin Air

Noëmie

Pedro Sarkis Portela

Ilya

Gregory Batson

Chapters:

0:00 cold blob

1:01 side quest to turkey

3:00 a bucket meets the deep

5:10 deutsche atlantik expedition

6:31 the neutrally buoyant float

7:54 woa just look at it

9:24 what are we doing to it?

11:09 ghost of climates past

14:40 cells in shells

17:07 what if it collapses?

18:16 what the data shows so far

21:38 climate models are flawed

23:27 deep history

24:33 thanks!