This is an online tool showing possible changes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) under different climate change scenarios. The underlying data is drawn from the research paper, European Temperature Extremes under Different AMOC Scenarios in the Community Earth System Model by van Westen & Baatsen (2025). More details, methodology and limitations are provided in the full study.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a large-scale circulation system in the Atlantic Ocean. It plays a key role in redistributing heat within the ocean and significantly influences both global and regional climates. Under the influence of climate change, the present-day AMOC may weaken or even reach a tipping point and collapse, leading to major climate shifts. The impacts would have devastating consequences on societies, economies and ecosystems around the world.
This tool and the paper it refers to focuses on the impacts of an AMOC collapse in Europe, which would experience a substantial cooling, more intense cold extremes, and increased winter storms, amongst other consequences, including reduced overall rainfall.
Wider impacts of an extreme weakening or collapse of the AMOC include: cooling over other parts of the Northern Hemisphere including the US; additional sea-level rise, especially along the northeastern coast of the US; increased warming of the Southern Hemisphere; severe disruptions to the tropical monsoon systems; reduced ocean carbon dioxide and a possible negative feedback effect releasing more carbon; serious threats to marine ecosystems; and possible knock-on effects on other climate tipping points.
Many of these climatic shifts would have profound implications for global agricultural production and food and water security, potentially threatening the livelihoods and food supply of billions of people.
The only way to mitigate the risk of an AMOC collapse is to stop burning fossil fuels and rapidly cut global greenhouse gas emissions.
The data in this online tool are model output of a fully-coupled global climate model, the Community Earth System Model. The climate model simulations were conducted on the Dutch National Supercomputer Snellius within NWO-SURF project 2024.013 (PI: H.A. Dijkstra). All the data are part of the ERC-AdG project TAOC (project 101055096, PI: H.A. Dijkstra).
The full data is available at this link.