AMOC: When simplification leads to ambiguity
📅 19 November 2026, 13:00-14.00
💻 Online event
About
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) plays a critical role in the global climate system and influences the climate of Scandinavia. Its potential weakening is a concern, but recent studies have reached seemingly contradictory conclusions about whether it has weakened in recent decades. How can both findings be correct?
This seminar explores the challenges of assessing long-term changes in the AMOC. Direct measurements are available at only a few latitudes and provide a limited snapshot of a circulation system that varies over decades and longer. Researchers therefore also rely on climate models and indirect indicators, such as sea surface temperature. However, these indicators are influenced by multiple processes beyond the AMOC itself, making their interpretation ambiguous.
The talk will examine what we currently know about the AMOC, why different methods can lead to different conclusions, and how scientific uncertainty can become oversimplified in media coverage. It will offer a framework for critically interpreting claims about the AMOC and its potential changes.
Key Topics
- The AMOC and its role in global and Scandinavian climate
- Direct observations, climate models, and indirect indicators
- Sea surface temperature as a proxy for AMOC variability
- Sources of uncertainty and ambiguity in climate research
- Communicating scientific findings and interpreting media coverage
Speaker
Leon Chafik
Leon Chafik’s research concerns ocean circulation and climate, with a focus on understanding large-scale ocean dynamics and their implications for regional and global climate. His work examines how ocean circulation can be observed and interpreted, and how different measurements and indicators shape our understanding of climate variability and change.
Highlights
Climate communication: Learn how to critically assess claims about the AMOC in the news.
Scientific perspective: Understand why studies of AMOC change can reach different conclusions.
Methods and uncertainty: Explore the strengths and limitations of measurements, models, and indirect indicators.