anlomedad<p>edit: added another image. <br><a href="https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lol2.10455" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c</span><span class="invisible">om/doi/full/10.1002/lol2.10455</span></a></p><p>Amazing! <br>And <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/openaccess" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>openaccess</span></a> ° <br>Also, the references in the paper are a treasure trove. </p><p>20,000 days in the life of a clam shell 10 mio years ago in the Indonesian Throughway shows heavy rain events, seasons and what the authors say is a proto- <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ENSO" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ENSO</span></a> cyclicality, dominated by <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/LaNina" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LaNina</span></a> . <br><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018224007004" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">sciencedirect.com/science/arti</span><span class="invisible">cle/pii/S0031018224007004</span></a></p><p>When you hear "dominated by La Nina", is your mind jumping to AMOC slowdown and tipping? Mine does.</p><p>The longterm climate records stored in this clam species can indeed show early warning signals for AMOC's tipping behaviour. In this paper, Arellano-Nava and D.J. Reynolds et al 2024 look at up to 500 year old (!) clams from the Northern Atlantic, document the approach for finding Early Warning Signals, and see a slowdown since 1750 <a href="https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lol2.10455" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c</span><span class="invisible">om/doi/full/10.1002/lol2.10455</span></a></p><p>Light slowdown since 1750 was already visible in Thornalley's <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/AMOC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AMOC</span></a> reconstruction from 2018. He used sortable silt grain sizes near Iceland and near the Canadian coast .<br>So a different proxy showing the same slowdown. <br>I took the liberty to superimpose Thornalley's and also Rahmstorf's AMOC reconstruction over vanWesten's AMOC in their freshwater experiment to show the striking similarity, see picture 3. </p><p>But a gradual, even slowdown isn't an actual Early Warning Signal for tipping behaviour where <br>"...it flickers, then it tips...". </p><p>For AMOC's tipping behaviour, van Westen's team last year identified various Atlantic locations in various depths, none are in the classical research locations in the Northern North Atlantic ! Particularly not in the <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ColdBlob" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ColdBlob</span></a>... See the two map images from the supplement with the AMOC schematic by Chidichimo et al 2023. <br>It's still only a preprint tho, first author Emma Smolders <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.11738" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">arxiv.org/pdf/2406.11738</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> </p><p>If I understand it correctly, the clam species lives on continental shelves in shallow-ish waters, not in the ocean abyss. So most locations Smolders et al identified are probably not good for using clams in reconstructing AMOC during the late <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/Holocene" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Holocene</span></a> or in <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/paleoclimate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>paleoclimate</span></a>. But some are, eg around the Canary Islands near Africa on 30°N, and many on the shelf along South America. <br>Especially important because the monitoring arrays (dashed lines in Chidichimo's schematic) have only been installed very recently. But clams can provide a continuous, annual to daily climate record everywhere – in shallow-ish waters.</p><p>I'm feeling actual excitement in the hope that researchers are now combing the ocean floor for these shells in the identified locations...</p>