Scientists have named the "island of cold" in the North Atlantic a sign of impending disaster

In the North Atlantic, south of Greenland and Iceland, scientists have discovered an anomaly — a large area of the ocean, which, unlike the rest of the world, is not warming, but cooling. This was reported on June 12 by CNN.

According to the publication, since 1900, this area, dubbed the "cold spot" or "warming hole," has cooled by almost 1 degree Celsius. A new study links this phenomenon to the weakening of a critical system of ocean currents, which may indicate the approach of a climate catastrophe.

"A large area of water is doing something very strange. While the rest of the ocean is warming, it's getting colder here. A new study claims that this mystery has an answer, and this is an ominous sign that the world is rushing towards one of the most alarming climatic thresholds," the article says.

We are talking about the Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm water from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, where it cools, sinks and flows back south. Many studies indicate that this system is weakening due to the melting of ice and the influx of fresh water into the ocean caused by global warming.

According to Stefan Ramstorff, co-author of the study and professor of physics and oceanology at the University of Potsdam, cooling occurs not only on the surface, but also in the depths of the ocean, where the influence of atmospheric conditions is minimal. This, in his opinion, indicates that the driving force is precisely the change in heat transfer by ocean currents.

The collapse of the AMOC will be a global catastrophe, scientists warn. This will lead to accelerated sea level rise off the east coast of the United States, plunging Europe into a deep winter chill and a change in the African monsoon, which will cause prolonged droughts. Some studies show that the system is at its weakest level in the last thousand years, and its collapse may occur as early as this century.

Cold shift: how melting glaciers threatens Russia

And how do the processes in the Arctic and Antarctic affect the weather in the central part of the country

Science Daily magazine reported on May 4 that the intensity of the extreme melting processes of the Greenland ice sheet has increased sixfold compared to the figures of the past decades. Researchers from the University of Barcelona have found that the area of the territories affected by these processes has expanded by about 2.8 million square kilometers every 10 years since 1990.