Iceland is Planning For the Possibility That Its Climate Could Become Uninhabitable
3 81Iceland in October classified the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation -- the ocean current system that ferries warm water northward from the tropics and essentially functions as the country's central heating -- as a national security risk, a designation that amounts to a formal reckoning with the possibility that climate change could render the island nation uninhabitable.
Several recent studies have found the AMOC far more vulnerable to breakdown than scientists had long assumed. One, analyzing nine models under high-emission scenarios, saw the current weaken and collapse in every single instance; even under the Paris agreement's emission targets, the researchers estimated a 25% chance of shutdown. Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of that study, said it was "wrong to assume this was low probability." Simulations of a post-collapse world project Icelandic winter extremes plunging to minus-50 degrees Celsius, and sea ice surrounding the country for the first time since Viking settlement.
Iceland's national strategy for dealing with AMOC risks is scheduled to be finalized by 2028. The country has also flagged that NASA Goddard, a key source of AMOC modeling, has been targeted for significant staff and budget cuts under the current U.S. administration.
3 comments
Re:So let me get this right... (Score: 5, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @02:28AM (#65981712)
Global warming is going to make things colder?
In some areas, yes. Global warming will destabilize existing wind, weather, and ocean currents into new patterns. Some places will loose their current heating and cooling sources.
Drain the Chesapeake Bay and see what happens to the weather around Washington DC and Baltimore. Drain Puget Sound and see what happens to Seattle. Flowing ocean water can have a stabilizing effect on the land area near them.
Stop the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the warm water that keeps Iceland temperate will stop and no longer be a stabilizing source. Iceland would get colder and the AMOC current would turn to new locations. There are several models that show the best guess of what would happen but suffice it to say it would change weather patterns for numerous locations.
Imagine that! (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @03:24AM (#65981780)
A country looks into the future and sees something bleak. Then they begin to plan for it.
Imagine how stupid they would be if they just denied it, turned a blind eye, and then actively attempted to accelerate directly toward it.
Re:Or... (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @07:42AM (#65981994)
I mean, to be fair, Denmark nearly did order Iceland evacuated during the Mist Hardships after the eruption of Laki.
We tend not to get "geologically-catastrophic" eruptions here like, say, Yellowstone. But we get "historically-catastrophic" eruptions surprisingly often, once every 100-200 years or so. For example, the largest lava flow on Earth in the entire Holocene is in Iceland, the jórsárhraun, from Bárðarbunga.
Take Laki for example. A 25 kilometer long fissure "unzipped". Lava fountains peaked at 800-1400m high. The eruption lasted for 9 months. The worst problem was the gas. To give some perspective: Pinatubo was the gassiest eruption of the 20th century, emitting a very high ~20 MT of sulfur dioxide (Mount Saint Helens by contrast was only ~1,5MT). Well, Laki emitted *120 MT* of sulfur dioxide. And 8-15MT of hydrogen fluoride, which is vastly worse. Normally polar volcanoes have little impact on global climate (volcanic climate impacts tend to be strongest poleward of the volcano), but Laki was so intense that the Mississippi River froze at New Orleans and there was ice in the Gulf of Mexico. It disrupted rain cycles around the world and caused famines that killed millions (Egypt suffered particularly badly). Tens of thousands of deaths were reported directly from the gas in the UK (one presumes the sick and elderly who are vulnerable to air pollution). Weak harvests and the poor government response to it aggravated tensions in France, and probably contributed to the French Revolution five years later.
Regarding the latter... it's funny how things can come full circle. Because the French Revolution ultimately led to Napoleon, and thus the Napoleonic Wars, which led to Denmark losing Norway to Sweden, which led to Denmark clamping down on its remaining colonies (including Iceland), which created the local anger in Iceland that led to the Icelandic independence movement that ultimately led to Iceland's freedom.
But Laki is hardly the only one. Another good example is Hekla. If you look at old maps of Iceland, they commonly draw Hekla hugely prominently, erupting, using the scariest drawing style they can. Hekla became quite famous in the Middle Ages in Europe as being the entrance to Hell. It was written as being the prison of Judas, people claimed to see souls flying into it during an eruption, etc. It seems to have gotten its fame during the 1104 eruption, which dusted Europe with ash.
But there's so many more [eldgos.is].